Why the evolutionary rap experimentalist is on the cusp of cutting edge.
If the name Ghostpoet has never once popped up in your entirety, it's not too late. However considering the London based rapper Obaro Eijimime and the rest of his instrumental band/backing had been nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize, a prize which many projects gleam into the limelight of the fresh music front line, it would be a complete tragedy for his fruitfully vibrant wonder to be lost without a mention.
So, let's say that you haven't fully travelled into the retrospective kaleidoscope of Ghostpoet. Well a start is that the man himself originates from around the pinpoints of Coventry, Nigeria and Dominica before releasing his first EP for free, titled, ' The Sound of Strangers' where songs such as 'Longing for the night' are a fanatical fizz of elongated tongue twisting echoes. He continues to produce a synth backing of urban recurring " Just a lone type figure/just accepting the crowd" , he can even pull of " then its right back home to Masterchef on the T.V" . Perhaps its just the capability of Obaro's brooding vocals dusting over the microphone that make the eccentric construction such a perfected result. After being taken up and scouted by Giles Peterson was soon put under his Bronsworth label up to the release of 'Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam' picking up the Mercury nod. This all being released back in 2010 it still sounds a fantastic foundation to take off from.
Such paths have taken Ghostpoet to the whole variety of summer festivals over the years, one being last years Reading and Leeds in which I discovered him at in the first place. He was placed in what the BBC acclaim to be the 'live treehouse' with a collection of synthesizers and trumpets amongst other percussion whilst Jen Long and Greg James were jamming out in the back focus of the camera. You can think along the lines of James Blake's 'Retrograde', for starters the artwork is pretty similar for 'Some Say I So Like It Light' but It's clear from the minute you tune in that Ghostpoet projects his work as an epic, spiralling and climatic project. As you see in the bands 'Cold Win' his lips are stylishly slurred over each syllable, Obaro can find each and every effect to bring even a single breath as an obsessive instrumental.
Last May also saw Ghostpoet release his album, 'Some Say I So Like Light' It features most winding tracks like, 'Dial Tones' which may of been produced in some cranky old garage project, as well as being used as the Dragons Den theme feature song, it involves Lucy Rose's floating vocals, " It's my constant reality/ I believe everything is fine/ I'm just hearing dial tones" which beautifies the song along to the deepness of Obaro himself. Hastening to add that collaborations go down pretty smoothly in this album. It forms a sort of jazzed up love elsewhere, also within 'Plastic Bag Brain' involving a continuous picky riff as if Ghostpoet's travelling or in this case "Standing by the river/head to toe with shivers' in a meandering, genius journey. Meltdown ignites along with the music video a regretful yet somehow necessity that perspective over an intellectual, conscious perspective which focuses into the fact that just how theorised perhaps, his experiments can be.
To say the least, 'Some Say I Like It So Light' is a diversely paranoid Londoner groove of how this man, Ghostpoet, along with his essentials can make a profoundly said new born baby in the creativity of synth-rap, a new genre out of one album is always a good way to go so I'm eagerly scanning through this years festivals for any sign. A rich welcome to the dance tent in the late afternoon is the prediction, even so I for one, cannot comprehend m excitement for this guy and just plugging in gives you a whacked out whizz, rushing through an evolutionary sound system of a brain that Ghostpoet possess. And when I start writing erratically like that it its almost completely dependant on a new obsession.
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