Tuesday, March 2, 2021

New Music: Thorts & Joel Siméus - The Happy Little Vegemite EP

 

 

A lot of you may be thinking, "wow Dimxsk reviews Thorts a lot". The reasons are threefold: 1) Thorts is f*cking dope, 2) Thorts lets us hear his music ahead of time for review purposes and 3) Thort's albums are short making them easy for me to review with my current work schedule. Take The Happy Little Vegemite EP. At 4 tracks long this is a bite sized treat of dissonant noise, surreal imagery and dark cynicism. It features one of my current favorite producers and one of my current favorite rappers working together as they did before as Thoel Simerville, this time with Joel handling production solely and Thorts doing all the rapping (hence the name change and Thorts "pouring his f*cking Thoel out on "Good Egg").

So for edification I asked Thorts a very simple but probably a very common question. What the fuck is Vegemite mate? He had this to say:

"Vegemite is a spread for toast (haha), an Australian one that most people in the rest of the world absolutely hate and are disgusted by but we are brought up on it so it's normal for us.

Here is a commercial for it from back in the day"

 
I guess it could be said that titling this from something that is in a way very personal for the rapper (sounds like Vegemite is the wheaties of Oz) is fitting. This is Thorts at his most stream of conscious, throwing a bird at convention. The lack of vocal contributions from Joel make it a bit more accessible for those who don't speak Swedish (unless you're like me and don't necessarily care) but this is still a very very weird album as a result. It is also so far removed from Long Distance (his most recent EP with Whatever Cecil, which is beautiful and intricate but also much easier on the ears) that it again impresses upon me how versatile the rapper can be. Probably a skill set that comes from such a long time in the game (Thorts is a vet in the Australian scene), leaving him familiar enough with the art to bash headlong through genre barriers and express himself freely.

There's not much else to say here. I liked this EP a lot, it's got moments of darkness (the ironically title "Happy Little Vegemite" which has a grimy and grinding noise beat that brings out that aggressive wordplay) moments of levity (or at least a more upbeat tone in the also ironically titled "Rainy Day" contemplating the fleeting nature of existence and time) and moments of sheer weirdness (in "Lake Baikal" as in shit be deep like). And it may be the result of talking a bit with the guy, but I feel like Thort's music has a sort of personality to it that is completely unique to the rapper and can be readily delved into and experienced through the speakers. I'm curious to see if any of you agree actually, or if I'm just crazy. But the metaphorical fourth wall is missing here I feel like...

You really just have to hear it. If Thoel Simérville was too Anticon doing Nine Inch Nails for you but you felt like you could've gotten with it had it been just a bit more accessible, then this is your solution. It won't put a rose in every cheek, but maybe just a cheek here or there, and I can only imagine Joel and Adrian don't mind that too much.

Here's the video for my favorite track off the album, "Rainy Day":




 Get The Happy Little Vegemite EP here, and thanks as always for reading. You guys are the sh*t. See you Friday and hopefully on time this time !



No comments:

Post a Comment