Kieran Jones aka F.E.E. (Fuck Everyone Else) presents his unashamedly old-school mix of electro dub, hip hop, and groove on his new album Returning to Earth from Other Planets.
Kieran has been around for a long while, and has never stopped bringing out good music: from his Londoner hiphop crew True Element to a divergence into folk, an indie band and a bunch of ghostwriting; but you feel that his real love is the mixing and sampling he employs to put together his more recent output “in the shed at the end of my garden” (you wonder how shedlike that interior really is…). F.E.E. says “I find collaboration hard because I’m a bit of a control freak” – something he seems to have got over enough to manage a good few creative collabs over the years.
off-kilter beats, distorted vocals and heavy old-school scratched weird trumpet riffs
New album Returning to Earth From Other Planets is the second album in a trilogy; the first album The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same came out in January of this year, the third is planned for a Xmas release.
Straight out of the gate you get the vibe that is going to permeate the whole album, with his enthusiastic, almost gleeful embracing of old school techniques and atmospheric, heavily sample-laden music.
From the brief opener Ready to Launch we’re straight into the title track; London-accented rapping over roomy, atmospheric sounds backed up with an old-school RnB drumbeat.
From there next track I Love Drums jumps straight in with a joyful RnB horns sample that drives the track forward with vocal scratching and a slightly soporific hiphop beat that breaks out into a jazzy Rhodes solo before coming back home.
Kieran jones aka f.e.e. sits back and lets his honey drip all over this half-hour of good music
The City From Above drops down into a very mellow kicked-back track with floaty female RnB vocal courtesy of Carleen Anderson from Jazzmatazz over more jazzy piano stabs and futher scratching and then we’re woken up and shaken about with an urgent, garagey banger with strident, distorted vocals from F.E.E. on The Return of the Space Pirate.
One of my favourite tracks is a number buried in the latter half of the album, Hip Hop is Wack: off-kilter beats, distorted vocals and heavy old-school scratched weird trumpet riffs; suddenly it goes somewhere else, different time signature, different sound; then something else; then we’re back into the reverby trumpeted beat.
htmlThe whole album is something you can just happily and comfortably sink into, turn the lights down, look up at the stars and let it play…F.E.E. isn’t trying particularly hard to impress anyone; he’s got the confidence and talent – and experience – enough to just let his honey drip over this whole half-hour of good music…
Bookmark this playlist (or get the vinyl if one comes out)(or even better head to Bandcamp and make everyone happy) and make sure you have it in your shelves/playlist collection for those evenings when this kind of sound is just the right sound.
Looking forward to the third album in the trilogy around xmas time bigtime!
Find F.E.E. here: F.E.E. Bandcamp
