35 / 101
035
NEWS
MUSIC
A
dmitting he’s someone who is usually
“bouncing off the walls all of the time,”
Citizen Kay’s (Kojo Ansah) instrumental opener
to new album
Belly Of The Beast
may seem
out of turn – but its rustling leaves and gently
suspiring piano open out into a
record filled with versatility, with
gems of jazz, alt-pop, electronica,
and the most artistic kinds of rap
wound around a hip hop spinal
cord with a conscience.
The verses in
Who Are You
lean back super slow, but with
a relentless rhythm; sometimes
Ansah completes the whole
bar and keeps rapping half-way
through the next, to the point
where you think he might run out
of breath. “Usually I write just
how I hear it in my head, and then
I have to learn how to maintain
my breath, to breathe at the right
time,” the Ghana-born, Canberra-
grown, humble and goofy
musician says of his process.
“I definitely write it how I think it needs to
come across, and then I teach myself how to
actually perform it.” In this track as well as
For
Me
and
Company I Keep
, we also get to hear
the man’s sweet singing voice. “I like singing
– but I’m definitely not a singer,” he smiles.
“My mum has always been in a church choir,
and I used to play in their band as a guitarist,
in my yesterdays. Then my voice broke and I
realised I couldn’t sing. But any opportunity I
get to sing a little bit, especially in the context
of this album – I can mask it around other
people’s voices. That’s a little secret. I just put
INTERVIEW
CITIZEN
KAY
Dumb Days
by Tired Lion is out
September 15 via
Dew Process.
someone who can sing over the top of me,
and bury myself in there somewhere.”
Company I Keep
includes electric keys, a
syncopated hi-hat beat with limber rimshots,
and a plucked double bass – there’s an Andre
3000 air to it, especially in the
Dracula’s
Wedding
sense of its lyrics questioning
whether to run to or from a particular girl.
“Jazz is f-cking dope – I wouldn’t be able to
tell you anything, really, about jazz, but I’ve
always got it playing,” Ansah laughs.
The fantastically spirited
Barred
– a stand-
out from the tracklist – features a sampled
monologue about Indigenous Australians
delivered by a terribly shrewd and eloquent,
but very cuss-happy, Aussie man. He’s
clearly no politician. “He’s quite the dude,”
Kojo laughs. “His name is Tony Mann – he’s
a mastering engineer from Melbourne. He
puts up these motivational videos, or him
just ranting about stuff… this one just really
resonated with me. But I made sure to open it
with him saying ‘I’m not an expert on all of it.’”
The subject of Aboriginal relations is
something which gets attention from a few
different angles on the album; listening to
Ansah’s impassioned thoughts on
Barred
,
one wonders whether he has ever been
questioned about why he feels such a strong
alignment with the travails of an indigenous
people who are not his ‘own’. Ansah actually
answers that question, on the album’s closer
Never Again
. “Three years ago I went back
to Ghana,” he elucidates. “I went back for
the first time since I came here, since I was
five or six. Twenty-odd years [and] I finally
went back to the motherland. And that was
a massive, eye-opening experience for me
– hearing all of that history. Ghana was the
hub of the slave trade; Cape
Coast Castle was the holding
ground, after they captured
everyone and before they
shipped them off to wherever.
Then, when I toured with Ice
Cube, [Australian rapper] Briggs
was talking to [Cube’s] sons
about a particular shooting that
happened in the States. He was
talking about how everyone
here gets in an uproar about
it, but that the thing is, that’s
happening in the Indigenous
community here. Just that
statement in itself, I was like,
damn. I know nothing about
what’s happening with the
Indigenous community here. So
that, coupled with that trip, set
up a whole lot of questions in my mind.”
Belly Of The Beast
proves that taking
the time to centre himself is just as critical
as engaging with social issues to Ansah.
Opener
A Moment to Breathe
is this release’s
contemplative, lyric-less pause for the self.
“In the two years since my last album I’ve
been getting into meditation. Just breathing
exercises, just to be able to keep myself still.
That first song is meant to do exactly that.
How often do we take a minute to just stop
and breathe? The world we live in is just so
hectic… it makes all the difference.”
ZKR
TOURING
15/09 - 29/09
Belly Of
The Beast
by Citizen Kay
is out now via
ONETWO.
TOURING
30/09 - 20/10
opener to the record; were you
aiming to set the scene for
the entire album with its ‘f-ck
you’ feel? How important was
ordering these songs into a
coherent tracklisting?
Yes! Exactly. We all felt like
Japan
really set the tone for the
whole record. I think my favourite
part is the introductory Bikini
Kill-esque scream I do at the start.
I've always wanted to let loose
like that so it was awesome that it
was encouraged this time round!
Man... getting the track listing right
was very tricky... especially with
this new, streaming, 'must have
singles to the front' theory. Luckily
we had enough time on our hands
being stranded in a car for several
hours at a time, so we could mess
around with different orders.
Fresh
contains the line “Idiot,
you made me rhyme.”Are you a
fan of the
10Things I Hate About
You
poem (the most romantic
moment in a teen movie ever)?
OF COURSE! I'm a huge sucker
for romance and Shakespeare as
a matter of fact. I actually don't
know who I'd be if I didn't get
goosebumps whilst watching
romantic films or reading books.
I'm such a sissy but I love it. The
poem is 10/10; it's actually inspired
by the Shakespearian Sonnet 141,
so if you're into that check it out!
Do you try to organize your
live setlists to allow your voice
time to recover from the most
frenetic or challenging tracks?
Do you have a secret vocal
warm-up tip?
Yeah! We tend to space them
out but sometimes in a short
amount of time we have to put all
the challenging tracks together so
I have no choice but to toughen
up. My warm-up is pretty weird. I
make Pterodactyl noises, like the
dinosaur... I should probably learn
how to warm up correctly but find
this works pretty well. It's just odd
croaking noises really.
TL & ZKR