Garage has had a funny old couple of years, whilst its helium R&B pop sound laced with skippy beats has rushed up and down the Top 10 and spawned interesting new and uniquely British pop hybrids like Craig David and Mis-Teeq, things have been cementing on the 'underground'.
South London's pirate radio waves are crackling with energy as they disseminate new strains of dub, hip-hop, techno and house all mashed together and united under the irresistible syncopations of 2 Step. And, although it's largely still a 'London thing', there are interesting new takes on the music's most fertile possibilities filtering through from around the world, especially America.
Against this backdrop arrives newcomer, 21-year-old Mike Skinner, from Birmingham not Clapham North, with a 'Garage album'. Unlike So Solid's significant first step into 'Garage album' territory, it's not overlong, doesn't take its lyrical cues from a simplified reading of US hip-hop braggadocio and, arguably, isn't even really 'Garage' at all.
By his own confession, Skinner spent too long in studios aping the Wu-Tang Clan - you can hear it on 'Geezers Need Excitement' - and not getting anywhere. Then, presumably, in a moment of inspiration it occurred to him that not only should his music speak of his own experiences as a young lad in England but that it should become a veritable 'Carry On Up The Dog Star' of parochial reference. References to the world of games consoles and spliffs, all-night garages and the passing of the summers of love, hi-rise flats and heroin.
Predictably, quarters within the London Garage community have balked at the idea of a Brummie - Skinner was brought up in Birmingham but now lives in London - appropriating their music. This is where the ugly spectre of 'authenticity' awakes from its slumbers. Like the folkies turning against Dylan for plugging his guitar in, the Garage heads have trouble with Skinner's vulture-like appropriation of every musical language at his disposal. And the mockney Jamie Oliver tones with which he delivers his not-nearly-as-pathologically-obsessed-with-'haters'-as-we've-come-to-expect verses.
But Garage, the UK's most innovative and exciting contribution to emerging music, ought really to be the last place you'd expect to find artists bogged down by the spurious ideology of 'authenticity'. Unlike rock, which frequently stumbles at this hurdle, it's not confined by a retrospective self-image. Rather, it's the very definition of the musical hybrid with roots reaching back through such disparate musical cultures as US house, Jamaican sound systems, hip-hop, drum n' bass and Detroit techno.
You have the suspicion, however, that Skinner isn't comfortable with the idea of his music as pure 'artifice' and may yet blow it in the rush to prove that, no, really...he IS a' geezer'.
What 'Original Pirate Material' makes abundantly clear though, is that - whilst Skinner may not be at the very cutting edge of Garage's club soundtrack (check Zed Bias' bowel-churning remix of 'Has It Come To This?' for some of that) - he's a man blessed with an astonishing aptitude for pop and a mainline into the Zeitgeist. As well as being quite probably the only genuinely humorous Garage release this makes apparent a new path for British pop to tread. Let's push things forward.
by James Poletti