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Has Gilles Peterson found the next successor to Roots Manuva and Ty in Ghostpoet?

Clearly he has found one of the UK’s most inventive young MC’s Ghostpoet in a post-grime neo-dubstep darkness of laid-back electronic beats with a street level commentary with a down-to-earth approach, Ghostpoet is another next big thing!

That said, I wasn’t instantly blown away by this album which now seems quite ridiculous with hindsight. Perhaps it’s because the shadow of Mr. Rodney Smith looms so heavily over any poet with whit, imagination and street savvy. And musically, at the edges of influence are grime, reggae, The Streets or even Radiohead and you can even get all this on one track, like ‘Finished I Ain’t’ or the dreamy night-time funk of ‘Longing For The Night’.

If there is a fault, you might think it’s a bit one passed but just as that thought crosses your mind, he slips in the electro-disco ‘I Just Don’t Know’ with the reflective, “I can’t be a respected rapper all the time, so I thought I’d write a simple song with different lines” and Jill Scotts’ ‘Golden’ gets a mention on ‘Survive It’

These are a just a couple of the excellent tracks and you can see why Jamie Woon loves his laid back groove (Ghostpoet is touring with Mr. Woon who has been away far too long) and you wonder why Mr. Peterson hasn’t been plugging this album on his show much more than he has. The single ‘Cash And Carry Me Home’ is one to catch the attention of a Zane Lowe student crew on a late night out and ‘Gaaasp’ seems to pick up on the XX remix vibe of Gil Scot-Heron (as in I’m New Here, the original and the best!)

Expect to find ‘Garden Path’ in a Hectic Podcast very soon as I’m a sucker for anything with a bit of birdsong in it but my current favourites are ‘Run Run Run’ and ‘Us Against Whatever Ever’, think heavyweight Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip on a FlyLo spaceship.

Ghostpoet (aka Obaro Ejimiwe) is coming to a town near you soon and the live experience is said to be more experimental than the album so definitely worth checking out.

On Tour:
20/02/11 - Start The Bus (Supporting Jamie Woon) Bristol
21/02/11 - The Brook (Supporting Jamie Woon) Southampton
22/02/11 - Audio (Supporting Jamie Woon) Brighton
23/02/11 - Hare and Hounds (Supporting Jamie Woon) Birmingham
24/02/11 - Scala (Supporting Jamie Woon) London
25/02/11 - Shipping Forecast, (Supporting Jamie Woon) Liverpool
26/02/11 - Hipnioza, Katowice, Poland
28/02/11 - Other Rooms (Supporting Jamie Woon) Newcastle
1/03/11 - King Tuts (Supporting Jamie Woon) Glasgow
3/03/11 - Nation of Shopkeepers (Supporting Jamie Woon) Leeds
4/03/11 - The Grand Social - Dublin, Ireland
6/03/11 - Cardiff Arts Institute (Supporting Jamie Woon) Cardiff
11/03/11 - Lefto Presents.. w/ Kode 9, Kid Koala, Jamie Woon Vooruit, Gent, Belgium
08/07/11 - Worldwide Festival, Sete, France

Reviewed: Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam (Brownswood Records) Cat. No: BWOOD057CD Release date: 7th February 2011
Tracklisting:
1 Onetwos (0:40)
2 Run Run Run (3:19)
3 Us Against Whatever Ever (4:28)
4 Finished I Ain’t (4:19)
5 Longing For The Night (3:34)
6 Yeah Pause (0:17)
7 I Just Don’t Know (3:36)
8 Survive It (4:21)
9 Gaaasp (5:27)
10 Cash And Carry Me Home (3:35)
11 Garden Path (2:49)
12 Liiines (4:51)

Links:
www.ghostpoet.co.uk
http://soundcloud.com/ghostpoet
http://thescrawlsofghostpoet.blogspot.com
www.brownswoodrecordings.com
www.myspace.com/gillespeterson
www.myspace.com/brownswoodrecordings
Album launch - Thursday 17 February 2011 at 7:30pm Electrowerkz, 7 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ Tel: 020 7837 6419 Web: www.electrowerkz.com