Ghostpoet closes Liverpool Sound City review

Posted on 20 May 2012
By Amber Tan
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Sound City’s closing parties saw a headline battle of the bands, with Liverpool’s B-movie art rockers Space, fronted by a clean-cut Tommy Scott, sporting a teddy boy quiff sharing a timeslot with British singer-producer Ghostpoet, weaning students and hipsters alike.

Ghostpoet and his reworking of Trip Hop filled the Kazimier but the apparition left no lasting, haunting impression.

His album title Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam was inspired by/stolen from Smashing Pumpkin’s smash-hit Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and is Trip-hop re-hashed for a new generation.

Experiencing Ghostpoet live is little more than a dodgy 1994 re-boot glitch, taking elements from indie music elements and trip-hop pushing them on today’s kids who don’t seem to know any better.

Ghostpoet opens with Gaaasp, setting a murky, grimy, underworld tone: “Gotta take stock and start again.

“Take a deep breath and live life a little bit.”

Ghostpoet’s Trip-hop seemed out of place in the Kazimier of 2012, a clean-cut hipster haven, trying to capture the raspy quality of Tricky in an age where you can’t smoke inside.

Liiines is a cinematic number, but the music overshadows the weak lyrics. Survive It is Ghostpoet’s ditty on midlife crisis and could’ve been a reject from Martina Topley-Bird’s pad.

Simian Mobile Disco’s James and Jas, who were DJing at the Shipping Forecast popped in halfway through the set to have a look too.

Ghostpoet led them down his Garden Path, which was his best number with the lyrics in a short, almost Japanese haiku style, which resonated long after leaving his performance: “I’m not wise, I’m just a blagger. “Don’t follow, follow, follow me.”

The hipsters lapped it up, but we wouldn’t expect anything less. Trip-hop was born in Bristol in the 90s and the downtempo, hypnotic music was played at middle-class dinner parties, where tales and joints were shared amongst friends and in grimy basement raves at nightclubs that have long since evaporated with the original spirit of Trip-hop.

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