Horrorshow
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Horrorshow

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“These things don’t always have a clear start date, but we started thinking about the record as soon as we finished the last one – which was back in October 2009,” Solo states on when he and beatmaker Adit began piecing together King Amongst Many. “That was the early stages of throwing ideas around about the kind of record that we wanted to make. But there are a couple of tracks that date back to that time, when there was an original sketch of a beat kicking around. That’s when some of the early ideas started to take shape. We’ve been bunkered down pretty hard in the past year or so working on it in amongst touring, then doubly hard in the past six months. That was the end of a process that kicked off a few years ago.”

That three and a half year-long process imbued the record with tremendous variety and depth – qualities that didn’t always come easy for Solo and Adit. “We’ve definitely ran the gamut, been through plenty of ups and downs in the process of getting this record ready. There were times when we were really on a roll, and there were times when the writing process wasn’t coming to me as quickly as I wanted. The last month or two, having wrapped up the record – which was itself a pretty crazy race to the finish which ended with our mixing engineer and us staying up for 30 hours straight or something. It was pretty hectic. Then the month since then, we’ve been trying to channel the energy that’s out there. There’s certainly been a crazy amount of anticipation from our listeners, and from us. We just got to the point where we really needed to get it out there in the world to see what people make of it. There were all sorts of emotions involved in the process.”

King Amongst Many lands in yet another purple patch for local hip hop, with 2013 set to be one of the finest years yet in terms of the reigning genre’s history. “It’s definitely an interesting time for the music, people are pushing it in different directions,” Solo edicts. “The last however many years, we’ve seen an explosion of the hip hop scene that keeps on getting bigger and bigger. Artists are getting more opportunities to be heard on the radio, or to get on festivals. We’ve seen the emergence of local hip hop festivals like Sprung, and Raise The Roof in Melbourne, things like that. With that growth of the scene, there’s more food on the table, so to speak, and there are more people getting a seat at that table. There are more voices emerging, which is great. Artists like Jimblah have an important voice in Australian hip hop, and it’s great that he’s gotten on board with Elefant Traks,” he says, referencing Horrorshow’s current stable.

“I think what we’re starting to see happen is that our predecessors were people that grew up on classic American rap. That was their staple, their first  reference point, and where they found the ingredients to go on to use to forge their own style. Whereas people of my generation and the younger artists coming through grew up on that diet of American stuff, but also following from a long history of strong Australian releases. I’ve been listening to this music for 12 or 13 years now, that’s such a strong back catalogue of Australian releases, and for us as younger dudes listening to that stuff, it gives us more tradition to build upon and a greater sense of fluency. There’s not that many barriers to overcome to feel comfortable being Australian and making hip hop. We’re in an environment where we are beyond that, and that makes younger artists more comfortable in what they’re doing. That’s what’s gonna elevate the genre to the next level.”

As for the high charting of King Amongst Many, Solo is philosophical when it comes to what it means for Horrorshow and the broader hip hop community. “It’s a funny thing. Me and Adit were chatting about it last week, where we might land on the chart and how we could be as proactive as we could getting people to buy the album. We had a pretty funny moment where we realised it was such a strange conversation to be having. It was a different dimension to releasing music, one we never really anticipated. It’s great, obviously we’re stoked to have charted in such a high position. But it’s like Urthy said in one of his tweets, a number is just a number and it’s never going to capture the full worth of what we have going on here. Definitely the most rewarding things that I’ve encountered in the last week are the messages and tweets that I’m getting from people all over Australia and the world, how people are digesting the album, how they’re feeling it and what songs they’re connecting with. Just how excited they are that we’ve finally brought something out, because they’ve been waiting there patiently. That’s the stuff that really means the most to me.”

BY LACHLAN KANONIUK