Loki with becci wallace - g.i.m.p (government issue music protest)
by Gordon Johnstone -- 18.10.14
Loki with Becci Wallace — G.I.M.P
Review by Gordon Johnstone -- 18.10.14
It’s 2034 and everything is fucked. Welcome to Government Issue Music Protest; a horrifying and hilarious jaunt through Scotland two decades after a No vote in the 2014 referendum. Not only is G.I.M.P a timely and hugely important release, it is also Loki at his finest; pissed off and energised.
Loki’s delivery throughout the album is impeccable. Verbose when required, brutally straightforward more often than not, the man sounds furious. And why wouldn’t he be? Underneath the frenetic raps lies a dystopia of British proportions; the central belt is a nightmarish cacophony of social deprivation and corrupt ruling elites abolishing retirement and covering up the kidnapping of thousands of children. While exaggerated to the point of satire, the scenarios Loki lays out on G.I.M.P aren’t unbelievable. This gives the album an air of imminency and foreboding, not dissimilar to Children of Men, that makes the overall experience hugely immersive and slightly unsettling.
The jokes, quips, and insights are too context-dependent and plentiful to quote with any kind of efficiency, but there is one line in particular that encapsulates the G.I.M.P world, and ours, for that matter, better than any other;
“my benefit got a heavy sanction deducted from it / but it’s not all bad / RBS recorded profit”.
Who hasn’t heard stories of the working poor being blamed and punished for deficits sandwiched between Royal babies and record-breaking bank profits on BBC newscasts? Lines like this are peppered throughout the album and remind the listener that they are listening to a warning as much as they are an excellent album. Many of the lines that give the album its context sound like the idle musing of a mind that works too quickly for its own good; questioning the inherent morality of owning a house cat, sodomy via blacked-up Peter Capaldi masks, and Jeremy Vine getting blow jobs in Limmy shrines all give the album a sense of self-aware contemporaneous honesty without succumbing to constant pop-culture references or vulgarity. Not to say there isn’t a hefty portion of the latter, it’s worth pointing out.
The End is one of the strongest album openers in recent memory. Loki, a terrorist bent on destroying the Mega Tower that houses the professional classes and dominates the New Glasgow skyline, battles genetically modified wasps while wielding flame throwers, backed by bombastic brass-driven production that is as urgent as it is electrifying. Disappointingly, the BBC-style reporting at the beginning of the track falls slightly flat at a critical moment. It works well throughout the rest of the album, but in this instance it sounds scripted and clunky. Thankfully it isn’t enough to take the edge off Loki’s explosive entrance.
The Unimportance of Being Idle is the clearest manifestation of Loki’s discontent with society. Set during a dinner party, it follows the conversation between our protagonist and a person who seems well versed in the misconceptions and political rhetoric of our age. Loki sets about putting his guest, and the world, to rights, but not before threatening to defile Mother Theresa’s corpse out of sheer frustration.
Review by Gordon Johnstone -- 18.10.14
It’s 2034 and everything is fucked. Welcome to Government Issue Music Protest; a horrifying and hilarious jaunt through Scotland two decades after a No vote in the 2014 referendum. Not only is G.I.M.P a timely and hugely important release, it is also Loki at his finest; pissed off and energised.
Loki’s delivery throughout the album is impeccable. Verbose when required, brutally straightforward more often than not, the man sounds furious. And why wouldn’t he be? Underneath the frenetic raps lies a dystopia of British proportions; the central belt is a nightmarish cacophony of social deprivation and corrupt ruling elites abolishing retirement and covering up the kidnapping of thousands of children. While exaggerated to the point of satire, the scenarios Loki lays out on G.I.M.P aren’t unbelievable. This gives the album an air of imminency and foreboding, not dissimilar to Children of Men, that makes the overall experience hugely immersive and slightly unsettling.
The jokes, quips, and insights are too context-dependent and plentiful to quote with any kind of efficiency, but there is one line in particular that encapsulates the G.I.M.P world, and ours, for that matter, better than any other;
“my benefit got a heavy sanction deducted from it / but it’s not all bad / RBS recorded profit”.
Who hasn’t heard stories of the working poor being blamed and punished for deficits sandwiched between Royal babies and record-breaking bank profits on BBC newscasts? Lines like this are peppered throughout the album and remind the listener that they are listening to a warning as much as they are an excellent album. Many of the lines that give the album its context sound like the idle musing of a mind that works too quickly for its own good; questioning the inherent morality of owning a house cat, sodomy via blacked-up Peter Capaldi masks, and Jeremy Vine getting blow jobs in Limmy shrines all give the album a sense of self-aware contemporaneous honesty without succumbing to constant pop-culture references or vulgarity. Not to say there isn’t a hefty portion of the latter, it’s worth pointing out.
The End is one of the strongest album openers in recent memory. Loki, a terrorist bent on destroying the Mega Tower that houses the professional classes and dominates the New Glasgow skyline, battles genetically modified wasps while wielding flame throwers, backed by bombastic brass-driven production that is as urgent as it is electrifying. Disappointingly, the BBC-style reporting at the beginning of the track falls slightly flat at a critical moment. It works well throughout the rest of the album, but in this instance it sounds scripted and clunky. Thankfully it isn’t enough to take the edge off Loki’s explosive entrance.
The Unimportance of Being Idle is the clearest manifestation of Loki’s discontent with society. Set during a dinner party, it follows the conversation between our protagonist and a person who seems well versed in the misconceptions and political rhetoric of our age. Loki sets about putting his guest, and the world, to rights, but not before threatening to defile Mother Theresa’s corpse out of sheer frustration.
Other highlights include Revo Max, a Prodigy-inspired description of the potential consequences of a No vote in the referendum; State of the Union, a slightly hysterical call to arms against the British state; and 28 Years Later, the climax of the album where Loki uncovers a litany of horrors and grapples with the morality of the freedom we enjoy. The production throughout the entire album is superb; feather-light drum samples marry up perfectly to crashing brass and catchy guitar. At the risk of sounding stupid, they sound like songs. The music isn’t just there as a medium for the raps, it’s an integral part to the atmosphere and flow of the album.
Becci Wallace also shines on this album. Her contributions are graceful and well placed, her voice sounding somewhere between a breathy Disney princess and the sinister Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp. It’s a welcome counterbalance to Loki’s abrasive delivery where even on the quieter songs he sounds annoyed.
The sentimental moments of G.I.M.P are hit and miss. Perhaps an over saturation of redemption-rap has hardened my attitude to tracks such as Rain Water and Best Friends, but on a hugely ambitious album such as this, especially from a rapper of Loki’s skill and vision, they seem self-indulgent.
I once read a review of OK Computer that bemoaned Radiohead’s third album as being the moment they switched from ‘good’ to ‘important’, implying that ‘important’ is a negative label for music that wants to be listenable. The idea that an album being ‘important’ is an impediment to its enjoyability is nonsense. G.I.M.P is an important release and a wonderfully fun and engaging journey through a keen political mind. Scotland and the UK are in turmoil. The political foundations are cracking under the pressure and the stalwarts of the British establishment look scared and confused; it is imperative that new voices and radical ideas are given a platform. We need to consign the political elite, the middle class white men- our Tommy Sheridans and Ed Milibands and Gordon Browns and David Camerons- to the the Scotland of old and find new voices for the malcontents, the disappointed, the troublemakers, and the disenfranchised. Without these new voices we’ll be resigning ourselves to be, as Loki bemoaned, “treated like a bunch of fannies”.
Listening to G.I.M.P a month after Scotland rejected independence lends the album a poignancy that swithers between hilarious and terrifying. Only time will tell if G.I.M.P is satirical or prophetic.
G.I.M.P will be released on 05.11.14 on Black Lantern Music. You can pre-order the album here.
Becci Wallace also shines on this album. Her contributions are graceful and well placed, her voice sounding somewhere between a breathy Disney princess and the sinister Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp. It’s a welcome counterbalance to Loki’s abrasive delivery where even on the quieter songs he sounds annoyed.
The sentimental moments of G.I.M.P are hit and miss. Perhaps an over saturation of redemption-rap has hardened my attitude to tracks such as Rain Water and Best Friends, but on a hugely ambitious album such as this, especially from a rapper of Loki’s skill and vision, they seem self-indulgent.
I once read a review of OK Computer that bemoaned Radiohead’s third album as being the moment they switched from ‘good’ to ‘important’, implying that ‘important’ is a negative label for music that wants to be listenable. The idea that an album being ‘important’ is an impediment to its enjoyability is nonsense. G.I.M.P is an important release and a wonderfully fun and engaging journey through a keen political mind. Scotland and the UK are in turmoil. The political foundations are cracking under the pressure and the stalwarts of the British establishment look scared and confused; it is imperative that new voices and radical ideas are given a platform. We need to consign the political elite, the middle class white men- our Tommy Sheridans and Ed Milibands and Gordon Browns and David Camerons- to the the Scotland of old and find new voices for the malcontents, the disappointed, the troublemakers, and the disenfranchised. Without these new voices we’ll be resigning ourselves to be, as Loki bemoaned, “treated like a bunch of fannies”.
Listening to G.I.M.P a month after Scotland rejected independence lends the album a poignancy that swithers between hilarious and terrifying. Only time will tell if G.I.M.P is satirical or prophetic.
G.I.M.P will be released on 05.11.14 on Black Lantern Music. You can pre-order the album here.