Anti-Pop Consortium – Apparently

So the Anti-Pop Consortium is back after a small hiatus where everyone pursued their own personal projects (the outcome is that each has discovered his strengths and weaknesses, which normally is a polite way of saying something), and their first free downloadable track is called ‘Apparently’. In September they will release Fluorescent Black, which contains a whopping seventeen tracks of which this two-and-a-half minute trippy tune, on which everything is “outside of the machine, apparently”, is one. The three vocalists (Beans, Priest, M. Sayyid) take turns to tell their tales, and wordy is certainly a quality you can ascribe to this song, where violence (or the needlessness of it) constantly returns. Security currently needs to “ease up”, your favourite rappers are “underneath the ground in the rap cemetery”, and the government “send them go to war”.

Despite the trippy bass, for something so decidedly anti-pop and for a group that has the reputation of being experimental, it does kind of stay the same the entire song. Instrumentally it is kind of funky, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere except for providing a canvas for the words and rap. Which is, for a group labelled as “hip-hop experimentalists” a tad meagre I would say. Luckily the three have distinct voices and the duration of the track is quite short so it does not really grate, but it does fail to elevate. Perhaps combined with the sixteen other tracks the album will find its place, the track solo is okay, but not something especially lovely.