Balckhaine (Tom Heyes) has been burning up the underground with some of the darkest, dankest material yet to scorch the earth, combining essences of drill, electronic and futuristic dance music to weave harrowing tracks that captures a turning point in modern genre-bending as an art form in and of itself. Drawing on the Japanese avant-garde practice called Butoh (an intensely surreal and violent form of dance expressionism that features brutal movements and bodily mutilation) set to a droll sense of place in a Lancashire skyline.
Taken from Blackhaine’s Armour II EP we see the artist display his striking visual aesthetics at play with the video for “Prayer” and taking on the help of Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and the Soundcloud producer Iceboy Violet to push the envelope in a searingly powerful form of rap and ambient noise. Working with his long-time producer and school friend Rainy Armour II follows their breakthrough 2020 EP which was their first in the Armour series. Watch the video for “Prayer” in the video below:
In discussion about the meaning behind “Prayer”, Blackhaine stated; “It’s about building the guilt you carry into some form of negative faith. There’s ideas of loss in there which often is a companion to guilt.”
Describing the fragments of lineation threading through his work, he later added; “Armour II continues from And Salford Falls Apart. There’s a narrative connect that I don’t believe in being open about, but is clear if you listen to the projects close to each other. Armour II has focus on curation and production alongside the narrative. I wanted to add more voices to build upon this for Armour II. I created Armour II with Rainy whilst building a live show, we performed early ideas of tracks like “Pavements” at Berlin Atonal with Space Afrika, then at the Blackhaine headline in London and the live reaction from the audience has informed the creative processes.”
It’s fair to say that there is a movement in Salford- Manchester that is to some, scarily modern and prescient. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Reid) have been at the heart of this wave of fiercely talented young innovators and have put in hard graft since they first started releasing music in 2014. Done in the new cocksure Manchester style, which captures a broader ethos and less of the stale mod-rocker swagger whose stereotype no longer applies to arts in the area. As stated by Reid; “We might not have always had the plan to get to precisely where we are now but from the start there was always photographs, collecting things, record shopping, bouncing ideas, pushing creativity as far as we could get,”
You can see the collaboration between Space Afrika and Blackhaine for “B£E” in the video beneath:
