K. MARSHALL FLICKER & MEW: A HIP-HOP CHARACTERIZATION BY B. HASEMEYER

My ol' pal, B. Hasemeyer, aka Draven Undercrow/Daniel Pruett, has released an emotional album for the hip-hop/alley-cat sector: Mew. It's special for creating not only an atmospheric backdrop, but a multidimensional, musical characterization named K. Marshall Flicker.

"Enter the Dragon" is the introductory entry. Contrary to what one might presume, it's not a Bruce Lee homage, but instead layers Flicker's advent into the arduous, rap scene. 

In the sprawling and hip opening track, we taste the courage required to step into such a vast and competitive format, but it's not so much the record business that proves daunting to the narrator. He's dealing with life in its own perilous right, spewing the sounds of a man who's done wrong and wants to do right, despite the obstacles that await. Will he go from start to finish without hassle or defeat? That's the questioning gist of the composition and in many respects, the album's defining theme. 

"Catzting" continues Flicker's earthy path, with a crisp shuffling that's so inspired that one might make it a personal theme song. It's purely Flicker's, however, but in listening one does come to understand the character enough to embrace (to mouth) his woeful words. 

"Hot Car or Crap", accompanied by "homebrew beats my Modwump", is a whole other affair: not that it's unidentifiable, but Hasemeyer (Flicker)'s tone, his bopping flow to be exact, is ultra-tense and scary. It alludes to a dangerous act, a criminal stunt and its ensuing lament. All the same, one can't help but go along for the ride, for our anti-hero's mesmerizing mumbles prove too empathetic to evade. 

"Hidden Human Bio-tech" ("Underwater Breathing") is cut from the same, shaky cloth: a sardonic piece that denounces the upper crust, while combating a system that smothers and chokes; but when it comes to a sorrowful soul like Flicker, there's always an urge to strike back, to keep one's head above water, even if one's forever submerged. 

"Honey", on the other hand", brings it all back, with a smooth, placebo-induced thump that's comparable to "Catxing'"s. The tune grants a chance to relax and escape, to truly breathe, even if suppression intrudes. The melody is numbing and cool, but doesn't once shed the prior entries' austerity; if anything, one could argue, it creates more.

"Too Many Sleep Cycles", with music by Belial Pelligrim, is next in line, so captivating in its sorrowful vocalization that it'll freeze the spine and shattered it at the same time.  

Its woebegone roughness bleeds into "All Hail King Lorenzo" ("King of the Cat"), which through its discordant display, portrays the epitome of street life (cruel but more so euphoric) through a series of rude rifts. 

However, this stance propels a sense of false balance, and Hasemeyer/Flicker conveys it with utmost, funky sway in "For the Devil". The musical yo-yo bounces and twirls, buzzing like a bee with every cradling chord. It's a composition that pounds with snide irreverence, abetted by awkward surrender: an anthem for anyone who's ever wished to beat the odds, to never give up and above all, live: the personification of Flicker and those who've lost all they've ever gained.

As a last cry. one then stumbles into a court of kingpin imprisonment with the provocative "Looping Charlie". It's an ideal epilogue that paves the way for big-time disappointment and more so the art of coming full circle: an ingenious nomadic carol on all predestined counts. 

Mew is an experimental masterpiece: unorthodox and doleful, guilt-ridden and rebellious; and it all gels because it stems from Flicker's big heart.  

Hasemeyer's intrinsic study can be heard at 

https://blackboxrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/mew?fbclid=IwAR2XGxMOVohrzh9mq1kZlni6-cgz6np1pTyM-bMKeK-aE_sOC4YMFKshp3o

STARSHIP EARTH: B. HASEMEYER'S UNIQUE ROMANTICISM

B. Hasemeyer’s Starship Earth (available through Black Box Recordings on May 4) is a specialized trek into the solemn and doleful, serving music that shatters those bothersome, plebeian concerns and yet never allows one to forget them. 

To mount the mood, Hasemeyer (aka Daniel Pruett) creates a sense of terse irony among his album's tracks. They're never futuristic, despite what the title implies. They're more Woody Guthrie, on-the-road-strung, with a raw-rooted purr that would make B.B. King bow in respect.  (In addition, Hasemyer’s vocals invoke a fold of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits: perfect for his jagged deviations.) At the same time, the submissions are never country, blues, electronic or anything that could or should be categorized. It’s pure Hasemeyer, and Starship Earth is its own buck-the-system, looking-for-religion thing. 

One will recognize this most in “Bathead” (perhaps my favorite selection): a crazed, skittish, culminating composition that might play as one is pressed against a curb, reaching upward, over the clouds, into the stars. (Get the conceptual gist?) 

On the other hand, the lead-in woes are more consistently coarse, but no less pounding, particularly the echoing “Boobies”, which brings to mind--hey, you decide. Sure, it might be something salacious (a tease of forbidden fruit); then again, it could be a nod to those cackling fools who restrict one's growth and stomp one's space. Whatever it is, it’s there for good reason--and good grabbing--no matter the appointment or outcome.

Traces of “Boobies” can be found in other (later) tracks, which bridge and buffer certain "softer", saltier selections, such as the vibrating “Chorus”, the woeful “Wires” and the inflamed “Witching”, which brews madness and fear. 

Of the "harder" tracks,  “Cherry Key” is the most melodious and strumming of the latter, but ‘Kong Fuzd” complements its groove, even if its “in the middle”, gaming motif relays something rammed, repetitive and doomed. The rifting “Social Revolution at the Gas Station” is all the more pedestrian, presenting a discordant but oh-so-sweet, analogous place where the beaten can bemoan their disenfranchised circumstance and map a vain release.

Maybe that’s the whole peaking point of Starship Earth: People travel with rage and misguided goals, looking beyond their stations for some salvation, but in that gloomy search lies the romanticism that makes despair look bright and right.  

Life is what it is, and so is Hasemeyer and his turbulent creation.

Fill your ears at … https://blackboxrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/starship-earth?fbclid=IwAR37OlbJuGDKU7fyDc7uRubJKu-atPyqCGOgRmq-08WvcUn1eFjrCBbSpls.