From recording and experimenting with sequencers at nights during
his degree at Coventry University to a Mercury nominated debut album and a
string of sold out live dates, to say that Ghostpoet's (a.k.a. Obaro Ejimiwe's) rise
has been meteoric seems like an understatement. However, on his follow up album
Ejimiwe handles the dizzying past few years of his life with resilience and
humour, delivering an album that defied my initial expectations.
On Some
Say I So I Say Light Ejimiwe’s recognisably soporific
drawl remains intact, except now his delivery seems more focused and lucid with
an energy behind it that has been honed by live performances. Meanwhile, the
music has become even more minimalistic, tinged with eerie paranoia and a keen
sense of uneasy self-awareness. Opener Cold Win
cautiously points out “I don’t know this place”, while 12 Deaf‘s
disclosure that "Fear takes over me" sounds like it’s delivered from the
extreme depths and pressures of a submarine. The voice and music paired
together are still evocative of the creaking floorboards and trickling water
pipes of streets and tenement buildings. However, Ejimiwe seems more
pessimistic here, or maybe not so much pessimistic as dragged down and more
accustomed to everyday pressures and grime than he was previously. He is constantly
waiting on trains that never seem to arrive while staring out to sea, watching
out for dark clouds on the horizon. The smouldering and brooding atmosphere
palpable throughout the album is comparable to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine or Tricky’s Maxinquaye.
Moments of lightness and optimism occasionally punctuate the gloom: Dorsal Morsel sees Ejimiwe “revel in the elegance that only night can bring”
while Plastic
Bag Brain is driven by an idiosyncratically skewed
guitar melody. Lead single Meltdown is a bittersweet depiction of a dissolving relationship and is
probably one of the truest break-up songs I’ve ever heard. The vocal interplay
between Ejimiwe’s conversational outpouring and the yearning crooning of
Woodpecker Wooliams (who also appears on Dial Tones)
makes Meltdown both mournful and uplifting at the same time. Sloth Trot is the album’s heart, beating at a barely audible rate. Ejimiwe’s
meditative vocals search through an inertia-inducing gulf of synths and echoed
samples. “Is this all there is? / I’m not sure”, he ambivalently observes as a delay-laden guitar sound punctuates the haze before fading into the distance like a
far-off train. Towards the end the track descends into a disorienting squall of
wailing guitar, drums and clipped vocal samples.
While the minimalist approach does focus attention on Obaro’s voice,
unfortunately it does mean that some songs tend to sound similar after a while.
For sure, each song has character and collected together they evoke an
enigmatic and nocturnal urban atmosphere, but the album does tend towards
uniformity. In effect, Some
Say I So I Say Light feels like Peanut Butter Blues and
Melancholy Jam Pt.2. That’s not necessarily a bad thing
since Peanut
Butter Blues is a stunningly vivid portrayal of urban
living in contemporary Britain. Rather than moving into different territory, Ejimiwe has chosen to dig deeper and explore the darker corners and heavier
aspects of this area. It is as if we have followed him down the garden path
which he warned us away from on Peanut Butter Blues.
Ultimately it is Ejimiwe’s naturalistic yet affable personality
which really shines through and carries the album. You identify with him and,
just as with Peanut
Butter Blues, while things may not be at their best
he’s trying anyway. At the end of the album, Comatose’s
affirmative assertion “I feel”, repeated amongst awakening synths and majestic
strings that lift the mood, promises a brighter morning once this long night
has passed.
Some Say I So I Say Light will be released on the 6th May through Play It Again Sam.
JM
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