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CMU Approved
Approved: Farai
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 12 December 2018
Vocalist Farai Bukowski-Bouquet and producer Tone have just released their debut album as Farai – ‘Rebirth’ – a late contender for one of the year’s most incendiary LPs.
The record veers between inviting warmth and unfiltered anger, Bukowski-Bouquet’s thoughts often seeming to just pour out of her in the moment. In the case of one of the album’s singles, ‘National Gangsters’, this isn’t so far from the truth.
Tone recalls needing to nail the track in two takes due to the “paper thin walls” of the flat where they recorded it, not wanting to annoy the neighbours too much as Bukowski-Bouquet’s lyrically attacks the pervasive and often hidden presence of heroin in London.
‘This Is England’, meanwhile, boasts an ominous tone set in motion by Tone’s stripped down synth drones and drum beats, which he says are designed to reflect how “run down council estates crumble in the shadows of multi-million – or could be billion – pound private developments”. Over this, Bukowski-Bouquet delivers an impassioned tirade direct to Theresa May.
The album is not just wall-to-wall anger though. It’s a multi-layered endeavour, with Tone switching sounds to whatever best matches his musical partner’s mood. The results are well worth checking out.
Listen to ‘National Gangster’s here:
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