- English emcee GAIKA is a hard lad to easily place into any particular musical box. Landing somewhere between future r’n’b and dystopian dancehall, GAIKA might create genre-bending music that sounds as if was carved from the flesh of a time just beyond our immediate collective conscious, but the corrupted and visceral world he crafts is very much centred in his own current reality.
The stark oppression and poverty that looms, juxtaposed against inner-city London’s systemic gentrification has fuelled some of England’s most captivating contemporary music and GAIKA’s full-length debut, Basic Volume, is no different. There’s no such thing as grime, drill or modern dancehall without this unspoken, intangible gloom that hangs heavy over the most marginalised British communities.
After releasing a small splattering of EPs on one of my personal favourite record labels, Warp, GAIKA’s full-length feels perfectly at home on the genre-pushing label synonymous with IDM heavyweights Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Autechre, to name just a few. While definitely a step removed from those artists, Warp has ventured far and wide since its earliest days, refusing to defined by what came before, always striving towards experimentation and to give a voice that represents something current and authentic. It provides an aural representation of the collective struggle.
GAIKA’s debut doesn’t paint the prettiest picture, his musical is cerebral, captivating and confronting. The darkwave, industrial dancehall hybrid is subversive and insidious: slowly crawling under your skin and borrowing itself into your subconscious. It’s dense yet subtle, it’s spaced-out yet full-on; daring you to find a way to gracefully thrash your body alongside these wonky beats. Despite its extremely modern leanings, GAIKA’s version of dancehall still feels legitimate and far less uncomfortable and awkward, than -say- Diplo’s whack-ass reappropriation of the genre. It certainly does help that GAIKA isn’t a thirty-nine year old white dude from L.A., so shop around.
GAIKA’s incredibly unique brand of inner city gothic dancehall feels drenched in a thick layer of sinister molasses that strips the inherent joy of traditional dancehall and warps it into some entirely different, downbeat, musical beast. Rhe resulting record is a chaotic maelstrom, littered with moments of brilliance when each individual element syncs together with an intense finesse that is unlike anything else I’ve shoved into my ears this year.
- Jay Edwards.