After teasing the internet with one-offs and mixtapes for the last 2 years, Inga Copeland (ov Hype Williams) dropped a satisfyingly challenging and incisive solo debut LP proper this year, ‘Because I’m Worth It’.
Against a backdrop of forward, phantasmic dub and electronic production by herself and Actress, Copeland’s vocals are a typically mercurial presence flitting between half-heard bars and spectral, detached verse such as the brilliant “with my mind over money and the other way around, cash moves everything around me/significant of what we do, say, feel, everything is just by numbers”.
httpv://https://youtu.be/pse2TOVAkT8
Copeland’s debut contains eight songs, alternating between almost-instrumental numbers and deconstructed pop. Arriving with the prickling sonic extremes of ‘Faith OG X’, she posits the empowered narrative of ‘Advice To Young Girls’ set to Actress’ oblique production, and it’s not until ‘Insult 2 Injury’ that you’re offered some sort of more conventional structure, and even then it’s a flinty, bare-boned dub salved with lush Detroit chords.
The furtive dub-pop collage ‘Fit 1.’ is the album’s centrepiece, both literally and figuratively, melting Eastern accordion, Diwali-riddim claps and Burial-esque atmosphere with woozy slow techno and her most enigmatic pop vocal beside the dissolved dub meditation ‘DILIGENCE’, whilst ‘Inga’ feels like a darker parallel to fellow Estonian ex-pat Maria Minerva, and the splashing, metallic dub tang of ‘l’oreal’ imparts an abstract sense of urgency, numbed poise and feminine sorta dread that neatly sums up the album’s paradoxes.
httpv://https://youtu.be/XTz57LK_xhE
Jabu is nominally a Bristol hip-hop act composed of MC Alex Rendall and producer Amos Childs (who’s also a member of Killing Sound and one half of Zhou). Nominally, because, while utilizing the familiar structures of hip-hop, they operate in a bleak space where genre tags are meaningless at best and totally futile at worst, just like the rest of their comrades in the shapeshifting Young Echo collective.
Lief Hall, born 1981 in Nelson BC, is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and visual production designer. Hall’s musical projects have explore a diversity of genres including no-wave, electronic, noise, new music and extended voice. Her most recent project MYTHS released their second album on One Big Silence and toured North America multiple times, most recently with Grimes in 2012.
This event is presented by Digital in Berlin. Check out our Facebook page to win tickets.
Kometenmelodien w/ Inga Copeland, Jabu, Lief Hall
Wednesday, 03rd December 2014 | 20:00 CET
Berghain Kantine | Am Wriezener Bahnhof | 10243 Berlin/Friedrichshain
Inga Copeland on Youtube | soundcloud.com/j-a-b-u | liefhall.com | berghain.de
