When I was but 19 years old I spent seven long months working in a local boozer. I disliked it greatly but, to paraphrase my disgraced auntie, “I was young, I needed the money”.
It was there I met a chap named Simon Babic, who shall be referred to as ‘Simon Babic’ for the sake of a disinterest in providing anonymity. One evening Monsieur Babic invited a small handful of his colleagues round to his digs, where he had laid on a lovely spread of Wotsits and cheap cider. We sat in a circle and waxed lyrical about philosophy and I experienced the first and only time I have been patronised while sitting on a bright pink pilates ball.
At the end of this evening, after many an inquiry regarding his choice in music, Signor Babic handed me two full hard drives containing his entire music collection. It was through this act of thoroughly pleasant piracy that I had discovered labels like Anticon and Definitive Jux and artists like RJD2, Atmosphere, Sage Francis, El-P, cLOUDDEAD and Sole. I spent the next two or so years passing this collection off as my own, introducing others to music they’d not heard before and enjoying the fact I was an über hipster by being a hipster before it was cool to be a hipster.
The May release of Own Your Ghost from former Anticon roster holders 13 & God made me start to Babic like a mother lover seeing as though I’d been out of the loop for a while. The collaboration between Oakland’s Themselves and Germany’s Notwist has been maturing since 2008. An inspiring mish mash of melancholy and blissed out guitar work coupled with the strange timbre of rapper Doseone and Germanic accented crooning makes for something pretty special.
From swansong ‘Death Minor’, with its menacingly mellow guitar strums, collapsing synth and wonderfully constructed spoken word set piece, to the aggressive tumbling beats of ‘Sure As Debt’ or the understated crunk of ‘Janu Are’, everything feels as though it’s crafted with both groups’ aesthetics perfectly intact.
Everything except ‘Old Age’, with its happy chords and saccharine lyrics, sounding more like something Cut Copy would fart out and blame on an unsuspecting bystander. Aside from that, the pure energy and excellent production on show here make for a really solid and tight album, which is pretty impressive for a seven-piece ensemble based on two different continents.
If Simon Babic were to buy one album this year, it’d most likely be this. And if you know him he’ll probably give it to you for free.
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