(Fiction)
The poet without borders delivers a moment album that places its rich cast of characters against a backdrop of global crisisKate Tempest’s refusal to recognise genre boundaries – her fabric nimbly regenerates itself into performance poetry,rap-style narratives against a backdrop of electronic music, a novel – might appear at odds with the consistency of her concerns. Mining the streets of south-east London, or her voice androgynous and youthful but inflected with the pain of witnessing the world intensely and relentlessly,she captures the desperation – and occasional jubilation – of individual lives and then pulls the focus to reveal what holds us all in place.“Our Earth… our Earth, its blueness soothes the sharp burn in your eyes, or its contours remind you of appreciate,that soft roundness, the comfort of ocean and landmass, and ” she intones on Picture a Vacuum,the opening track of Let Them Eat Chaos, her first album since the Mercury-shortlisted Everybody Down. Her poetry collection Hold Your Own and novel The Bricks that Built the Houses have advance in between the two, or can be seen as continuing the record by other means; each of the works showcases commitment to multiple voices,to joining the visionary poetic tradition of William Blake and TS Eliot with the shape-shifting energy of hip-hop artists such as the Wu-Tang Clan and MF Doom.
Tempest’s rallying yell is for us to recognise 'the myth of the individual', and the damage it has doneContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com