ALBUM: Goldie Lookin’ Chain ‘Pill Communication’

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They’re back, having called the bluff of the “haters” and their refusal to pay for what they don’t want, Newport’s riposte to Jay-Zed, Fiddy (Non)Cents and Kant’ye, Goldie Lookin’ Chain release Pill Communication, the band’s XIX long-player.

Over 15 tracks GLC still satirically skewer the lifestyles of the leisure class, lampooning the high-end consumerism that attempts to fill the voids of the pill-popping Chelsea tractor-cruising yummier-mummies, perennially fretting about their “away on business” hubbies, their cossetted aversion to the grubby underclass, the layabouts, the alkies and the dopeheads that frequent lesser-labelled nosh-dispensaries. People like YOU.

Throw in further ditties on the perils/perks of stone-bliss, the crushing banality of daytime TV, treating the kids to a Wetherspoons on your “access day”, tributes to “madman” David Icke and “weed demon” Howard “Mr Nice” Marks and you end it feeling breathlessly entertained. Backed by beats and drops and hips and hops, the raps flow in a rhyme-time-good time-crime. Sublime, innit.

It kicks off with the droning-moaning-intoning of ITV’s premier narco-vision ‘This Morning’ seguing straight into ‘10 Draw Commandments’ – a countdown comedown ode to the herb, the gange, the Mary Jane, the ‘icky sticky’; a guiding dos and don’ts to achieving biblical highs and avoiding those satanic lows. And vice versa.

‘Waitrose Rap’ is a narrated journey through the aisles of “Britain’s number one non-discount superstore” set to the theme of 1970s aspirational television Are You Being Served?, the super-duper-market a consumption citadel where you “curtsey at the checkout” and can reel off all the “different types of pasta”, a supermarket sweep amongst the gilded (lack of) Grace mothers.

The lullaby-like ‘Instant Coma’ is a litany of the ever-changing array and varying strength of available smoke with the proliferation of choice (“AK47… Smells like your Nan”) forcing the masses to choose harder blow instead, a lament to match Prince’s seminal ‘Sign Of The Times’.

‘Hip Hop Has Been Good To Me’ is languid, Barry White funking around; clever cunning-linguae twisting and wordsmithery, a call and response to the eternal benevolence of this ever-popular genre, it’s deep-rooted messages forever ones of altruism and humility. ‘Just Another Bastard’ is a slo-mo confessional POV from someone who switches from sensitivity to aggressivity at the touch of a pint… or 10, those decimal trigger-switches that threaten to hamper every relationship. ‘Til the morning.

‘You Better Be Ready’ leaves off where Cypress Hill pick up, how do you fill your time when you’re low on blow, skint of mint, the existential horror of being straight from eight ‘til late? A doom-theme homage to all you Out-There Brothers and Sisters.

These forensic deconstructions of UK PLC 2016 © ®are the perfect antidote to the politico-skull-drudgery that pervade everyday existence. Sit back, light(en) up and let it wash over you, the sound of NOW is HERE. If you want it. Which you do.

Satire isn’t dead, it just got waylaid.

Pill Communication is out now.

Kemper Boyd
@dissapointon