DJ-Sinister   Dance and Electronica

Words by: Greg Harper
In a word: Menacing

Cor, sinister by name, sinister by nature. If dance music was meant to be this dark and arousing, the whole country would be like a hidden underground blood-lair like those in the Blade movies. The pulsating vibrations and erratic beats that seethe over the Atomic Hooligan-like wails of their album opener ‘Electric Snake’ are gliding towards the deranged nu-rave dance worlds of Hadouken or Klaxons, but pull back and open into far more cinematic soundscapes of noise that could just be one of the signs of the apocalypse. Menacingly unhinged and unpredictable, DJ sinister certainly lives up to his name.

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E.I.Pro   Dance and Electronica

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Fritz

Actually the collaboration of an altcore rock band and experimental techno designers, E.I.Pro has amalgamated the fundamentals of live rock music with the heavy beats of electronica to make a style of dance that’s very weighty, very ingenious and very clear-cut. It’s not necessarily trying to conform into the realm of ‘songs’ as we know them, what E.I.Pro are doing with their sound is making an anti-pigeonhole succession of noises that holds up an atmospheric candle to dance fans tired of dance music as it stands. More ambiance led, the music is crafted to be the background to drunken stumbles home from late nights out.

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Dejaru   Dance and Electronica

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Open

Rightly or wrongly, drum and bass might not be noted as one of the genres in music’s wide canon that is most open to outside influence. What’s interesting about Dejaru is how intent he is on not adhering to such rhetoric. Honestly, to read his own words on the topic, you might think he was completely bored of this whole drum and bass thing altogether. But far from the sound he produces being snooze-inducing, it’s this approach and willingness to be influenced by other sounds that makes 25 year old Jussi Lehtinen’s take on D&B the delight it is.

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Truth   Dance and Electronica

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Aware

Truth be told, this has been going for the best part of a decade, born out of the drum and bass scene of the clubs on England’s south coast. Very clued up on club politics and the intricacies of sound it takes to make drum and bass work, Truth started off Djing a particualrly heavy and uncommercial brand of hip hop (indeed, too heavy for some...), and certainly some of its intensity and weight was transported once he made the logical shift to the drum and bass world. Yet it is arguably in its most subtle patches that the real and various charms to his sound are to be located.

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CEE   Hip-Hop and Rap

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Broad

You don’t hear of many young and aspiring grime artists moving away from East London to start a career in the music business – but you’re about to hear of one, even if you hear of no others. Credit is certainly due to his desire to see a world outside of the scene’s spiritual home to inform and educate his music, but Chima Maxwell Baxter, now eighteen and living in Liverpool, also deserves plaudits for his lightning fast wordplay and constantly developing sound, a fresh and already fully formed sonic experience that alienates few and stands to entice many an ear, be they familiar with the work of his contemporaries or not.

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Hussein Boon   Jazz and Blues

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Silky

London based guitar slinger Hussein Boon has spent a good few years gently stirring and adding the right blend of spices to his debut concoction, and finally, it’s ready to hit the (virtual) shelves. Life Changes is the first solo record from the six stringer who has previously worked with the likes of De La Soul, Beats International and Freak Power, and it deftly showcases Boon’s skill with all kinds of guitars, lap steels and ukuleles. His smooth jazz rock recalls the likes of Jan Akkerman and Pat Methney more than the funk and R&B leanings of the more renowned bands he’s contributed to, but is none the less fun for it, and considerably more relaxed and delightfully moody a proposition.

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Moabi   Miscellaneous

Words by: Greg Harper
In a word: Art?

Remember that bit in Labyrinth where David Bowie is walking around his Escher inspired maze, his massive hair bouncing around while he fondles his glass balls. Image how it would feel DJing such a place. Imagine no more as Moabi has put that surreal landscape into a soundtrack that bemuses as much as its visual motivation does. The often confusing electronica that comes from the fingertips of Moabi doesn’t really have a place in your daily life, there’s no real purpose to it yet its beauty, arguably its artistic merit, lies in absolute uselessness. As a great man once said; to be art, it has to be useless as anything but. Ladies and gentlemen… we give you musical art.

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Voodooetnies   Miscellaneous

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Composed

Voodoo Etnies might sound like some kind of supernatural south American shoe company on paper, but things rarely sound good on paper – listen to Voodoo Etnies on record and you’ll find their mix of electronica, hip hop and contemporary classical music such as that of Johann Johannsson quite spellbinding. Unafraid to pack a punch or soothe the listener in its grasp in to an uneasy sleep, its gentle swathes of synthesised sound and tickling, niggling beats would make splendid bedfellows with the likes of DJ Shadow and Portishead, crowded a bed though that might be.

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Estrella   Pop

Words by: Greg Harper
In a word: Inexcusable

The jazz roots of pop outfit Estrella have all but vanished as they make approachable pop songs chock-full of snappy, finger pointing gestures to Sade and the like; y’know that bluesy, not to cynical, High Fidelity-like barroom jazz sound. You can hear the late shift DJ swiping his index finger across the record deck at half past four in the morning, a big cigar embraced by his other fingers with a JD and coke clutched in the ham-like grip of his right hand, a gentle nod to signify the steady pleasures of Estrellas notes. This is real post-club jazz pop for such characters.

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Tsering Purtag   Rock and Indie

Words by: Greg Harper
In A Word: Jokeshop

Maybe one too many viewings of Sesame Street while under the influence of certain narcotics has led to Tsering Purtag’s almost comic book style of psychedelic rock. It’s a Broadway / West End take on the Pop Levi sound, the quickening glamour and trills of 70’s burlesque rock with 50’s influences, definitely grounded in classic rock ‘n’ roll, now bastardised into something altogether new. Comparisons with Thin Lizzy, Bill and Ted movies and the inside of Timmy Mallet’s day-glow wardrobe will only confuse you more, so let’s just say that Tsering Purtag are one of a kind. This artists review was bought to you by the letter F and the number 12.

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Kelevra   Rock and Indie

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Fantasists

For Kelevra, or KLVRA if they’re feeling like they just don’t fancy using vowels on that particular day, the back story is as important as the music. And that the back story is completley made up (one hopes – it’s bloody weird). It goes thusly –in a land before time, a giant sky beaver lays a single egg on top of a brimstone mountain which sits there for four hundred years of rain, thunder and lightning until one day a creature emerged, screaming the name ‘Kelevra!’ so loud it permeated the fabric of space and time, eventually reaching a band of four friends in Southampton, England. So inspired were they by its noise they decided to make something loud enough that the mysterious baby sky beaver creature would be able to hear them back. That is the sound of Kelevra. Does all this fabrication mean that they’re not taking it seriously at all? No. After all, one heck of a lot of thought has gone in to creating that amount of hippy cobblers. And if you don’t like your music to have a sense of humour, well, Kelevra don’t like you either.

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Ben Hammond   Singer/Songwriter

Words by: Greg Harper
In a word: Atlantic

Ben Hammond, accomplished and fully certified soul and jazz performer has a youthful outlook on his genres enough to make his sound current in a “he’s a bit Jamie Cullum” kind of way; that cheerfully bleeding young at heart thing going a mile a minute. Charming and, turning up the air conditioning, a ruggedly handsome chap, Ben opens a small but beautifully formed window to jazz via serene and Pringle-like songs of popness. As we all know, once you’ve popped, you just can’t stop. You can picture dear Ben Hammond roaming his native Maine countryside, sitting beside lakes and staring at the trees with understanding, but we can also picture him strolling around the RAWRIP office making the tea and doing a biscuit run. Such is his down to Earth-ness, should such a word exist.

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Gumbo   Singer/Songwriter

Words by: Tom Hannan
In a word: Soaring

Some things are difficult to overcome. The forces of physics, for example, as Gumbo notes in his torch song ‘Gravity is the Hardest Thing’. Most singer songwriters would add to that list of insurmountable tasks ‘writing songs that aren’t about girls’ and ‘not being a bit of a boring, heard it all before kind of affair’. And though he remains grounded on this Earth with the rest of us as the cruel hand of nature forces us ever downward, Gumbo’s Waitsian music soars ever higher, meaning that the points at which other purveyors of a similar craft stumble and fall are transcended with a charmingly melodic ease.

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