Ever Running, Ever Rising
July 30, 2010Following their ARIA Award-winning smash Flying Colours, Bliss N Eso have gone up several musical gears on new album Running on Air. Jonathan Notley (aka Bliss) tells Dan Rule it's all about knowledge.
Of all the sonic flavours you’d expect to hear on a hip hop record, the twang of Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson would have to rate ‘least likely’. And Jonathan Notley, the man better known as MC and producer Bliss of Sydney hip hop figureheads Bliss N Eso, is highly aware of the incongruity.
“Man, in most people's minds, mixing country with hip hop is a hell of a stretch,” he says in his softened US accent, stifling an almost guilty chuckle. “Even our label were unsure about it, but we were like, ‘trust us, we know what we’re doing, this is going to work’.” He’s referring to Late One Night, a grimy, gunshot break that flourishes into a chorus hook, sampled from none other than Chambers and Nicholson’s 2008 hit Rattlin’ Bones. It’s a track that anchors the back end of new album Running on Air and reveals quality inherent to Bliss N Eso’s increasingly far-reaching approach to the Bronx-born art form.
“The last thing we wanted to do was create an album where all the tracks sounded the same,” Notley tells MAG from Sydney. “We wanted to paint a nice, wide spectrum of colours and styles and moods, so people could jump in wherever they want, and really get something out of it.” Trawling Running on Air, it’s hard not to agree. The rasping boogie-rock of tracks like Flying Through the City and hyped, Outkast-esque bounce of Addicted meld with the reverb-lashed blues-rock of Moses Twist and dark, jilting beats of Art House Audio. Examples of staid, conventional rap are scarce.
“It’s absolutely important to see the bigger picture,” he says. “We’re all on this planet together and we’re making hip hop for everyone.” In many ways, Notley’s attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise. The trio – Notley, fellow MC Max MacKinnon (aka Esoterik) and DJ Tarik Ejjamai (aka DJ Izm) – may have burst onto the Sydney underground in the early ’00s with an explosive melange of raw boom-bap and gritty, street-level lyrical attacks, but their rise has evidenced a far wider vision.
From underground burner Flowers in the Pavement (2004) and breakthrough Day of the Dog (2006), to ARIA Award-winning epic Flying Colours (2008) – which saw them travel to some of the poorest regions of South Africa to record Bullet and a Target with a traditional choir – the trio has emerged with a broad sonic palette. Their status as Australian hip hop’s most accomplished and widely celebrated crew seems assured.
According to Notley, who met MacKinnon and Ejjamai in early high school after his family moved to Sydney from the US, the trio’s journey has transcended music alone. “I feel that over the years we’ve matured a lot – in terms of the lyrics we’re bringing and the concepts we’re expressing – and we were really kind of aware of that when we went into recording Running on Air.” Tracked in a cavernous house near Hanging Rock in the central Victorian bush, the record drew much influence from its surroundings. “It let us have a bit of peace and quiet and get back to creating and focussing,” he recalls. “It did transcend a bit into the music.”
That isn’t to suggest that Running on Air, produced for the most part by Bliss, man of the moment M-Phazes and wunderkind Hattori Hunzo, lacks the boom-bap punch of its predecessors. To the contrary, so impressive is the record’s hip hop smarts that the group managed to attract guest verses from LA rap heavyweight Xzibit and burning slot from none other than Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA on the stomping Hunzo beat Smoke Like a Fire.
Suffice to say, it was something of a career highlight for the trio. “We sent him over the track and he really dug it and was keen to get on it and we were just over the moon when we found out,” he laughs. “We’re old school Wu fans, you know? To get like Ghostface or Raekwon would have been amazing, even Method Man, but to get like the motherfucker who started it all, was just ‘this is history, we gotta make it happen’.”
With Running on Air, you can’t help but get the feeling that Bliss N Eso are doing just that. “There’s the famous quote, ‘The wisest man knows he knows nothing’, and it’s very true in my mind,” says Notley. “We’re learning all the time; to close the book on that idea is a step backwards.”
Running on Air is out now via Illusive/Universal.
Visit: blissneso.com
