Good storytelling is timeless. There are narrative themes woven through London rapper Knucks’ unique brand of “chill drill” that wouldn’t be out of place in Shakespeare’s most prolific plays or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Knucks delivers universal tales of love, violence and street justice set amongst the backdrop of inner city London’shigh rises and council estates.
Woven through complex scenes of gang tensions, crooked police and professional hitmen, there are threads of cutting social commentary. The city in all it’s beauty and savagery is a part of Knuck’s music, his boots on the ground, observational writing holds a magnifying glass up to neglected and misrepresented working-class communities of central London. Searching for truth and justice in the murky world of gang violence (especially youth on youth) and unpicking the wider societal/governmental issues which have exacerbated it.
There is a deep humanity to be found amongst the gloom however - None of Knuck’s tales are black and white. Often, his protagonists deal with inner turmoil, their emotions punctuated with paired back, jazz inflected beats, the music’s subtlety adding a weight to Knucks’ lyricism.
These contemporary fables from the block are more crucial now then ever - in times of rising inequality and political /social tension, Knucks takes the threads of his experience to weave a narrative tapestry of heroes, villains and cautionary tales.
Listen to Knucks on The Illustrated Playlist
“My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self.” ~ Carl Jung
Employing a mixture of automatic writing, grounded commentary and magical realism to her lyrics, U.S singer/ songwriter Adrianne Lenker begins to untangle the human experience, distilling the weight of existence into her own brand of ever evolving alt-folk. Through solo excursions and with her band Big Thief, Lenker offers up honest, unique and personal attempts to communicate the process of what it is to be alive.
Lenker’s musical style cherry picks from a vast catalogue of American folk and country, but buried within her dense discography you’re as likely to hear the delay-drenched guitar tones of Shoegaze or 808 hip hop breaks as you are traditional banjo and fiddle playing. Lenker and Big Thief’s aptitude to transform their most popular songs into vehicles for experimentation and new expression is something that sets them apart. Lenker often reinterprets the same song multiple times in multiple styles, injecting new meaning into established material and letting the rendition exist uniquely in its own time and space. In an interview with Teen Vogue, Lenker says “Every recording is a recording,” When we're playing in a studio, we're playing live, in a room, and we press record. They're all recordings. It's just a different day, it's a different time, a different alchemy.”
Allowing the listener to ebb and flow with her own stream-of-consciousness, Lenker’s music gives a glimpse into her lived awareness, building connection through shared experience, offering optimism in emptiness and seeing sadness as a gift. We are all on our own journey. When lost in the desert, artists like Adrienne Lenker stand as beacons of light in the vastness of existence, anchoring us and helping us to find our way.
Listen to Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief on The Illustrated Playlist
A vintage Nissan Laurel careers through neon streaked London underpasses, chased by gun toting bikers firing off rounds. An opulent oriental parlour, drenched in smokey haze and crimson light reveals a cast of seedy characters cutting deals over a banquet of food. The table flips at an underground Mahjong game and somebody isn’t getting out alive. Welcome to the world of South-East London rapper, Jianbo.
You’d be forgiven for mistaking Jianbo’s videos for classic Hong Kong cinema - Visually inspired by legendary directors like Wong Kar Wai and John Woo, Jianbo embraces his Cantonese & Vietnamese roots, thoroughly remixing Eastern aesthetic through the lens of a London native. The stories and moods captured in these short pieces of film build up a mythos around his character, spinning a saga like the chapters of vintage Kungfu flick.
Jianbo’s talent for narrative adds an extra depth to his music. His flows are stone cold and dripping with oriental imagery, coupled with deep beats that feel like they’ve been dragged through the backstreet studios and pirate radio stations of South East London; think dark jazzy grime, liquid garage and early Croydon-sound dubstep often enhanced with collaborations from the likes of Black Country New Road and BABII.
The dragon is the symbol of innovation and charisma. Jianbo’s relentless style and creativity are pushing him above his UK rap peers and into a space of his own, serving the gritty soul of London with a slick, Hong Kong glow up.
Listen to Jianbo on The Illustrated Playlist
N.B. Also check out his videos on Youtube here.
The flicker and glow of vintage preamps, stacks of old-school guitar pedals and a headache of interconnecting cables. A glance at New Jersey bred singer-songwriter Mk.gee’s live setup is like staring into a DeLorean time-machine. One live video at a time, Mk.gee is inspiring a new generation of gearheads. Google him and you’ll most likely get swamped with Reddit threads and YouTube videos dedicated to unlocking his unique guitar tone or excavating digital relics like the Rockman X100 preamp. People are obsessed with the textures and feel of his sound, and they want it for their own.
Mk.gee is a master of creating in the moment and allowing that moment to pass. His RnB tinged, hook-heavy songs feel more like sketches in time - existing in various formats around the web, live versions can sound wildly different to his studio recordings, each performance given its own character through a symbiotic combination of performance and unpredictable electronic effects.
Together, his blend of bold, pop-centric songwriting and willingness to embrace missteps and mistakes as part of the process help to keep repeat plays fresh. Listen long enough and you’ll catch glimmers of Prince and Peter Gabriel peeking out through the distortion, but Mk.gee owes just as much to lo-fi producers of the 2010s like Jai Paul and Burial. Songs like “Candy”, “Dream Police” or “Rockman” feel like the ancient memory of an epic, 80’s-pop classic locked in the back of your mind since childhood, filtered and warped through decades of digital static. This feeling, though, is less like nostalgia and more like a music-induced temporal shift, spinning the listener down wormholes of half-remembered melodies drenched in glitched-out reverb and infinite delay.
Listen to Mk.gee on The Illustrated Playlist
N.B. Also check out his live recordings on Youtube here