OPINION PIECE for MINTMAGAZINE.CO.UK (sample)

Emerging from the tumult separating Emo’s post-punkisms and Hardcore’s punk leanings is Screamo. The brittle cousin often forgotten in an electronic golden age moving too fast to take notice of a few angry white guys and their guitar therapy. It’s a genre characterized by innocuous front-men turned poets, and guitarists more indebted to the incognito virtuosity of Messrs. Marr, Boon and Kinsella than the ham-fisted power chording of punk. An intermittent birthing pool of bands, it rarely peaks into any kind of wide spread welcome or prevalence. Instead opting to operate in a closed community of floors to sleep on, borrowed vans to drive in, and numerous side-projects to dabble with.

It’s not a perfect scene by any means, occasionally it traipses into the worlds of elitist pedantry and retrogression, and on the other-hand its noughties commercial off shoots taught me that a stock haircut can go a long way. Often staging the age old war between those aligned with the dreaded ‘mersh out to make some money, and those few brave DIY warriors, stroking the hair on their chest because of the ten man cap on their basement concerts. An understandable conflict if you take into consideration just some the crusty slices of life invested in some of these bands by fans and members alike. The music hasn’t suffered though, its rather cautious muddying of waters with other genres leading to a subtle reconditioning over the decade, rather then a core fan-base isolating rapid fluctuation. It’s cerebral violence merging with grindcore’s nihilism, black metal’s misanthropy and Justin Pearson’s intent to be so esoteric that he makes Alastair Crowley look like Victor Meldrew. Here’s some of my top bananas.

SAMIYAM REVIEW for BLEEP.COM

Serving as a testament to Hyperdub/Brainfeeder affiliate, Samiyam's long standing but somewhat unsung status as a stand-alone entity in the beat scene; Sam Baker's Album is a collection of unashamedly intoxicated cuts gleefully unburdened, but not untouched, by the influence of LA Messrs (and peers) Dilla, Madlib and Flylo. A unique bedroom concoction, cultivated from both sides of the Hip Hop Spectrum, It's as much Master P styled trunk bumping as it is trusted vinyl crackles and post-Dilla compression obsession. Throw in some some Nintendo-patented saccharine square-waves and the woozy funk-bass of robots and you have the one, the only, Samiyam.

Returning to us now with his first full album proper after a period of bubbling under (seemingly at his own digression), this album sees the LA resident ascend from the minimal to the effortless; aptly back, dropping chop after chop of with a only few choice snares, kicks and that certified fatboy bass. It makes for a Beat Hip Hop wading from song to song with a sluggish indifference for atmospherics or cinematics, focused rather on irreverent sampling and the discovery all of Hip Hops rhythms and grooves, big and small, stuttering and staccato. From the Sunday Morning G Funk of 'Lifesize Stuffed Animal' to the Keith Sweatisms of 'Escape's first half; this is a David Attenborugh standard documentation of all things beat and beautiful - with all the uncooked charm of Rap Beats Vol. 1 intact, but all the considered fluency of an art mastered added