Ratchet (LP)
$50.00
Out of Stock6+ weeks add to cart more by this artist
Shamir
Ratchet (LP)
[ XL Recordings LP / LP ]
Release Date: Friday 15 May 2015
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Ecstatic but hardened, urgent but expertly weathered, sparkling with the grit of a desert geode. Shamir's first full-length LP "Ratchet" is a disco-house-R & B marvel. It's a record about growing up in Vegas, though not the Vegas you think you know. Shamir grew up near a pig farm - the pigs were slaughtered and fed to the casinos. The casinos' slop kept the swine fed. This is where he grew up, in the margins of vice and excess. Never has the idiom "diamond in the rough" applied so literally.
He's not cocky, jaded, or an ingenue. But neither is he the opposite of those things. There's an obvious fluidity to Shamir. He transcends boundaries - genre, gender, age, geography. He feels solitary because there is literally no one else like him.
Las Vegas' Shamir is a bundle of contradictions. The schoolboy crooner warbles like a natural on country songs, yet he's earning rent money by firing off candy-coated hooks over synth beats. The casual listener might not take his work seriously for the use of aggressively youthful slang, but ignoring his sharp lyrics would be unwise. No matter how cavity-inducing his nosebleed-register vocals are, the R&B wunderkind spits fluorescent acid. Shamir isn't a traditionalist, and like it or not, he's ready to smash through boundaries with his bag of sugar, spice, and things that aren't nice. - Consequence of Sound.
Tracks:
1. Gang War Theme
2. Boy, You're Not From Here
3. ...Western Front
4. Give It Up
5. Intro to Story Line
6. Chicago's Burnin'
7. I Was Your Man
8. New York City
9. Top Ten
10. Interlude Oxygen
11. Tearin' My Heart Out
12. Maybe
13. Gang War Exit
