Guest review by Craig White
The velvet glove wields a barbed and telling flail – might be the over-riding motto of this album, a diverse and compelling set of tunes to welcome you in, before the poetry gives you a good slap, and then a bludgeoning for necessary good measure!
Anti Social Worker (Paul Wellings) has been a busy boy (‘hustler, writer, MC, DJ, musician, author, freedom fighter’) since 1983’s ‘Punky Reggae Party’ record, and sees now is time for the follow up. He’s not wrong – almost in some poetry blessed alignment with Atilla The Stockbroker’s dub poetry album (yes, they sit well together as testaments to troubled times), punk style adopting a more relevant, and less predictable delivery! Was i perhaps expecting a lambastic Public Enemy meets The Pop Group inna 7th level of dub hell kinda thing? Mibbe, but all things considered i’m glad that’s not what i got – I find the self proclaimed ‘Johnny Rotten Meets The Ghetts’ as a bit misleading, it’s way much more and much better than that! – What i did get, and what i’m really enjoying as a uniquely presented work, is a sharp series of tunes curated and created by those with an obvious love and knowledge of black music, set out as a platform on which to ride the rhythms with biting, conscious, thought provoking words…..poetry….street poetry! it truly appears to be the year of the ranting poet.
The album commences as per my expectations with a relentless and urgent trad hip hop stomper, superbly undercut with angry rhyme – don’t know if i’m suitably qualified to term the overall as Grime, but it opens proceedings with cutting intent, a purposeful manifesto. This is turned on it’s head by a touching tribute to his other half over a lilting Caribbean motif, and a looping jazz piece celebrating cultural diversity, ‘Real’ is a statement enveloped in a gorgeous mournful surf guitar loop – eclecticism is key, as further militant business takes us to the album’s centrepiece which is also the album’s masterpiece – Stunning relentless, dark rolling thunder (think an urban Killing Joke) accompanies the angriest words on show on ‘True News’.
With age comes wisdom and the ability to rage smarter, and that’s the over-riding slant to the poetry for me, as well as the subtle interweaving of autobiographical elements – It’s a very engaging narrative……forward, considered and spittingly belligerent when it needs to be! Skeletal hip hop takes us through a roll call of ‘Rebels’, mellow B&D for the incisive ‘War Inna Ghetto’, before ‘East Is East’ jacks things up urgently and into the Covid hymn, ‘The Masked Spitter’, which doesn’t fail to hit it’s target. ‘Street Heat’ winds things up in lazy jazz style over a recollective, but no less angry, piece……But wait! a bonus track, which might be just the telling of a joke, a funny joke, but not a new joke, but it may be that the old ones are the best….huh?
It seems that this is an album not enough people are going to get to hear, and to be heard is what it needs. It can be bought direct from M1 Music (see following link), but too few other sources. A lot’s gone into this work, and i’ve got a lot out of it, so i’m seriously recommending that you get yourself a copy – It’ll do you good!
Buy the CD here