Poor old UK hip-hop. Either mired in the true-school aesthetic of its Stateside progenitor or cowed into submission by the delinquent grit of grime, it's just never been a particularly interesting proposition. Fortunately, though, a few notable exceptions disprove the rule-- chief among them Infinite Livez. Where Britrap's stuffiest practitioners concern themselves with following a tradition of mildewed Transatlantic authenticity and the sound of London pirate radio reflects home-grown street life with rough-hewn aplomb but rarely looks any further than its own ends, this one-man lyrical sideshow has found a unique niche by keeping it surreal.
Trained at Chelsea College of Art & Design and frequently appearing on stage with a glove-puppet alter ego named Barry Convex, Vinnie Tiefilz (as he likes to call himself in person) whiles away his time making improvised noise CDs, drawing, and sewing. Pretty obvious that he's not your average rapper-- and that's before even thinking about the bizarre imaginary worlds weaved in his choppy Cockney rhymes. Take, for instance, the stand-out moments from Bush Meat, his 2004 debut album. "The Adventures of the Lactating Man" tells the tale of an everyday Joe who suddenly finds himself the proud owner of a fully functioning set of breasts, while "Pononee Girl" offers a first-person account of a one-night stand with a My Little Pony toy. All told, it was quite the calling card-- a brilliantly realized, yet utterly demented collage of scatological wit and perverse fantasy.
Now Livez has found rhythms strange enough to match his rhymes, joining Swiss electronic improv duo Stade on Art Brut Fe De Yoot. Recorded on the fly, then subjected to as little subsequent editing as possible, it's an album as immediate as it is confounding.
Mixing occasionally soul crooning-- some great, some wildly and deliberately out-of-tune-- with abstract, spoken word raps, the vocals are run through sequences of effects or simply left to sprawl over Pierre Audétat and Christophe Calpini's dissonant, de-funked instrumentals. For the most part, it's a perfect fit, especially the scattershot, disjointed "Unbiased Reductionism in 21st Century Music Practices" and the beautifully titled "Artyfartypartynazi". However, the marriage is occasionally uneasy and directionless, as if the words need some semblance of normality to keep at least a toehold on the real world. Still, the points where it does fall apart ("The Taste of Jazz to Cum") remain a small price to pay for a record as deliriously daft and unashamedly experimental as this.
That's what it's all about-- balance. As difficult and twisted as it may get, there's always a laugh to pull Art Brut back together. Packed with references to man-eating monsters, evil geniuses "stroking pussies," talking kitchen appliances, and-- most gloriously-- the impact of diaper fetishism on a devotee's wife and family, it may be weird and crass, but there's a wry, streetwise quality to all the deviance, a mischievous joy in storytelling and a keen appreciation of the absurd. It's this that makes Livez so obviously English, many of his songs like sounding like overheard pub conversations from some parallel, Pythonesque universe. Endearingly eccentric, he's enough to make you think that all UK hip-hop should be made up of equal parts Kool Keith and Benny Hill.
