Good morning, “Britain” was a centuries-long sociological study conducted by imperial grifters. In 2012, it came to an end; the country thanked us all for our participation in its great and terrible colonial project. The funeral took place at the London Olympics that year, and the ghost of Britain soon came rolling out on a Union Jack hovercraft.
A new generation of artists has since scooped ooze from the zombie, venturing into a memory of Britain they were barely old enough to experience themselves: from PinkPantheress’ cool but campy vision of pre-austerity Britain to Jim Legxacy’s dreamy historiography of Black British music. Growing up down the road from Legxacy, 27-year-old newcomer Kamal Frederick, aka BEASTIE, figuratively and spiritually shares his lane, taking the stoic futurist music of the British early aughts—grime, drill, trap—and making it wistful and aching.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Raised on the edge of South London in Mitcham—supposedly one of England’s most haunted towns—BEASTIE became a teenage fan of vaguely alternative, mood-heavy artists like Interpol, Frank Ocean, and Dev Hynes, while his schoolmates listened almost exclusively to drill and grime. Again, like Jim Legxacy (whose comparison is difficult to shirk at this early stage in his career), BEASTIE became artistically interested in what could happen when he filtered the tough, local sounds of grime through more generalized and introverted genres like indie bedroom pop and sensual R&B.
On maria, his second EP, BEASTIE looks back on his coming-of-age in Mitcham and the Black culture surrounding and informing it. The nine tracks are, fittingly for Mitcham, spectral and grimly psychedelic, folding the haze of his inner world into the sounds that raised him.
Lead single “Mitcham Mint” takes its name from a particularly run-down local pub and beautifies it, as memory is wont to do, with dream-pop guitars, sliding harmonies, and a feeling of music spinning in several directions at once while somehow finding its footing. It is a devotional exercise in atmosphere, faithful to the alt influences on which he was raised.
Across the EP, the percussion is crunchy, dry, and distorted, while BEASTIE’s voice floats above, bubble-like and lovely. On “Does It Rain?” BEASTIE’s treatment of grime influences and samples feels like a memory of a memory of a memory. BEASTIE was born in 1999, the same year Wiley first produced “Eskibeat,” the inaugural sound of grime. Here, BEASTIE intersperses the quick, violent ring of the sample with Alex G-like fingerpicked guitar, followed by grime’s second-most consequential sample, “Rhythm & Gash,” deftly folding the sounds inside his head with the ones outside.
On “Crescent Moon Over Figgs Marsh,” he gets closer to the edge of his own sincerity: a simple acoustic-guitar figure cycling through primary-color chords while he speaks, “Bygones are just static/Two pills for the balance/Tragic.” He is sometimes a little high on his own supply of sincerity. There are moments when the emotional catharsis feels cheaply purchased, when vulnerability seems too hastily chased after. His sound, only two EPs in, is still a little underdeveloped, but it’s still a body of work that showcases his great potential: a voice that could, and probably will, climb the rungs of the underground.
BEASTIE is part of a growing cohort of young artists who are rapping earnestly about their “true colors,”about fluffy bunnies and being “locked in love.” Where the British underground artists’ greatest sparring match once centered on hard-boiled grittiness, now there’s no spar at all, only a display of new sincerity. BEASTIE’s great lack of beastliness places him squarely among the most tender and sensual artists to emerge from the scene. He’s an adept craftsman, sewing a British bricolage from some of the country’s finest scraps.
