British hip hop took a while to ignite. But Tim Simenon, aka Bomb The Bass,had been doing his own singular thing production wise since the eighties, but the third album Clear felt like a step up from his poppier efforts. Released in the mid nineties, it’s at times more akin to a more oddball Public Enemy.
Fuzzy, playful and bursting with collaborators, it still sounds good. Justin Warfield pops up twice, most notably on ‘Bug Powder Dust’, a clear nod to William S Burroughs. Two who we sadly lost recently, Sinead O’Connor and Benjamin Zephaniah, team up on the haunting ‘Empire’, which takes on colonialism.
But perhaps the most startling guest is English writer Will Self, who provides deadpan monologue on ‘3 Ml Barrel’, a druggy look at bodies as highways. Self was a recovering addict, and his voice adds an otherworldly nature to an already complex record, full of textures and ideas.
Hit The North 