- Futuristic rap-rock-dancehall as seen through the lens of '80s and '90s nostalgia.
- When it comes to the arts, South London artist, director and political activist Gaika Tavares is a mad scientist of sorts. There's hardly any artistic terrain he hasn't trodden upon. Whether it's shows at the ICA centring on Black futurism, ballets directed and composed with the Royal Opera House or the genre-eschewing, incendiary music that fuels it all, his creative endeavours are a form of metaphysical alchemy intended to collapse the separation between art and life, or sometimes, between his art and himself. Early on in his career, on tapes like SECURITY and BASIC VOLUME, the rapper-producer experimented with leftfield electronics and hefty dancehall, gradually moving towards visceral takes on club, trap and drill music. His new album—and his first for Big Dada—sees him using less patois and a wider range of vocal inflections as he wraps a metamorphic mix of post-punk, darkwave, alternative rock and grunge around a sturdy hip-hop spine. It's his most personal music to date, turning the lens onto Gaika himself and exploring themes of love, pain, brutality and beauty in their rawest forms.
Recorded in a secret vault under Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, accessible by invitation only and through multiple secure doors—Drift was a term used by Gaika to describe the movement and exchange of creative energy cultivated in this space by him and the artists who contributed to the record. Production assists from the likes of Kidä, avant-garde producer brbko and a host of classically trained musicians bring psychedelia and a bark that matches the bite promised by a talent pool as rich as this one. Letting go of the things that didn't serve him, emigrating to London and generally finding his place in the world as a man and musician are examples of what the term Drift also came to represent for Gaika—the currents of life and the directions in which they can carry us in.
In terms of music, Drift manifests as a distinctly punky, rebellious energy where the drifts slide into recklessly satisfying skids. Unbridled chaos is the governing force throughout the album. When Drift is not invoking the image of a lawless city gone up in flames, the more downtempo moments feel like the quiet before a riot. With booming vocals sent through grimy mic filters and lines like "Guard the gates if you must" or "No justice if you’re soft" landing like rallying cries to action straight from the podium, Gaika carries the archetypal image of a revolutionary on Drift—flare in hand atop a burning police car in the chaos-ridden cityscapes that each track depicts. Mentions of Batmobiles and carnage aside, the snarling "BONEHEAD BEHAVIOR" turns London into Gotham with theatrical, high-octane imagery: "Running round with the big knives / Helmet on, cut the lights / Jump the bikes, swerving out of sight," Tavares snarls, with a delivery so serpentine it starts to resemble a hiss.
When Tavares gets personal on Drift, as he often does, his lyrical vignettes plunge beneath the surface, depicting vivid and often painful memories through abstract prose. On "PIÑATA," he recounts a magnetic attraction that never goes beyond lusty encounters in a hotel room. Despite charged declarations of synergy ("I'm built for you"), he suggests that they "live and let the ting go" to avoid peeling back the layers for the sake of self-preservation. Like a piñata left intact, they never become privy to the bliss that might lay within. "GUNZ" is a disarming moment of self-reflection where Gaika ruminates on his own displacement and migration over explosive percussion and a lurching bassline that sounds like it came straight out of the Yves Tumor playbook.
As future-facing as self-proclaimed "ghetto futurist" Gaika's non-musical endeavours are, he channels past influences (Massive Attack, Wu-Tang Clan, Prince) as much as anything else, so his music is both thoroughly alien yet also tantalisingly familiar. It's nostalgic escapism that, according to Gaika, is meant to channel the feeling of being a kid. "I feel like I’m trying to make kid music—late '80s, early '90s soundtracks. That feeling… before you know what cheesiness is or before you start to become afraid of yourself or develop social anxiety in terms of expressing emotion," he told Control Zine. He transcends pretension and expectations with raw, free-flowing sonics that don't adhere to what's cool or current, but instead serve as a battering ram swung towards the status quo. "The sleepless, they don't dream / They promise to touch the world," he declares on "GUNZ." With Drift Gaika does exactly that. After spending sleepless nights in vaulted studios, fusing inspiration and collaborations from Portugal, North Africa, Jamaica and more, the panoptic Drift ends up as Gaika's border-fluid magnum opus. It's another sharp turn in the road on the winding journey of a creative nomad.
Tracklist01. DRIFT ON
02. PIÑATA
03. GUNZ
04. FIRST AMONG MISFITS feat. The Narrator
05. LA VACANZA feat. Kidä
06. SUBLIME
07. EXIT TO CISCO
08. LADY feat. BBYMUTHA
09. O VAMPIRO
10. BONEHEAD BEHAVIOR
11. VICIOUS CHAMBERS
12. ULTRA SCURO
13. AND THERE GOES THE CHALLENGER
14. LESS BURNERS BIGGER HEARTS feat. The Narrator, Azekel