Music

As calling cards go, 2007’s ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ was well, a killer. Both determinedly cultish and all over radio and the decks of cooler indie clubs, it was at once a wryly humorous rant, a rallying call and a serious entreaty to cut the attitudinal, post-modern crap and become a person of principal (‘thou shalt not steal if there is a direct victim’; ‘thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants’; ‘thou shalt not read the NME’). That it did all this against a perky, electro-hop backdrop without sounding like a lame student parody proved that bearded Essex rhymesayer Scroobius Pip and baby-faced beats-builder/producer Dan Le Sac had talent. Two further (fine) singles followed, but the question was, could they manage an entire LP?

With ‘Angles’, the pair have triumphed. It’s basically a pop record, albeit one that looks to rap/street poetry for its socio-political content. Mike Skinner’s spirit hovers close by, but lyrically, Pip has it all over him. Sharp, literate and philosophically wide-ranging, his rhymes brim with warm and witty insights, whether dealing with a relationship stale-mate (‘Look For The Woman’), the current state of hip hop (‘Fixed’), self-harming and suicide (the title track, ‘Magician’s Assistant’) or how the idea of beauty has become debased (‘Tommy C’). For his part, Le Sac provides more than mere backdrops: the rapid-fire rhymes of ‘Back From Hell’ are matched with a mix of frantic jump-up and juddering electro; ‘Letter From God To Man’ makes brilliant use of Radiohead’s ‘Planet Telex’; and the slyly meta-textual ‘Development’ weds twangin’ blues guitar to dark, tech-step synths and staccato beats. All good reasons to rethink the ‘cracking debut = flash in the pan’ equation.