035: Moving in the Dark, by Dizraeli and the Small Gods

Dizraeli and the Small Gods (United Kingdom)
Moving in the Dark (2013)
15 tracks, 60 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

If I’ve known you for any length of time, you’ll have heard me extolling the virtues of Dizraeli. He’s a poet/rapper/performance artist and I honestly believe he is a genius of our time, for the things he thinks and the way he thinks them. Moving in the Dark is the only album Dizraeli made with his group the Small Gods. Together, they were an amazing ensemble, one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live. They’re eight-strong on this album, and the line-up is top-class; I’m just going to stick the personnel list here:

• Dizraeli: vocals, melodica, guitar, sound design
• Cate Ferris: vocals, flute, piano
• Jules Arthur: keys, vocals, viola, noises of all descriptions
• Lee Westwood: guitar, vocals, hammered dulcimer
• DJ Downlow: turntables, vocals, sound design
• Bellatrix: double bass, vocals, beatbox
• Nathan Feddo: double bass, electric bass
• Paul Gregory: drums

They’re all amazing musicians with a whole web of solo and collaborative projects between and amongst them, I really urge you to check them out if you wanna hear a wide-ranging bunch of tasty sounds. Back to the task at hand though…

With an octet of top musicians with backgrounds and interests in all manner of styles, this was never going to be a straight hip-hop album. It’s a little bit of a move away from the heavy folk influences that worked so well on Diz’s previous album, although there are still traces. Instead there is a much heavier influence from contemporary jazz (which itself takes cues from hip-hop…) and modern art music. The title track is a great example of this: the strange chord changes are disorienting as it is, but there’s also a really cool bit of rhythming in the chorus, with some parts playing four bars of 4/4 and some playing four of 3/4 and one of 4/4…they’re all playing 16 beats at the same time, but those contrasting accents throw everything gloriously off-kilter.

As the title suggests, there’s a lot of darkness on this album and some of it is quite creepy. It’s never not compelling though; just look at ‘There is a Way.’ It’s a beautiful and atmospheric folkish song with bagpipes, but it’s saturated with sadness and reeks of urban loneliness. And when you need them the most, there are jewels of hope that shine in the bleak: ‘The Little Things’ is a touching tribute to friends and lovers with sage advice from a Nanna, and ‘Never Mind’ is a slightly-Latin, slightly-dubby, slightly-ska reminder to bounce around as much as possible, because if you don’t, what’s the point? I mean, the chorus doesn’t quite work properly if you’ve got a northern accent like mine, but let’s forgive Dizraeli that. He is one of our most important and under-appreciated artists of the now, after all.

[Also, just this last Saturday, the BBC World Service broadcast a documentary presented by Dizraeli, called The Politics of Mongolian Hip-Hop. So if you want to get to grips with the scene in Ulaanbaatar, you can listen again now.]