How would life be if the Beastie Boys combined with the Lightning Seeds? If the hip-hop beats sitting beneath heavy-ass guitars giving off a percussive snarl, pseudo-arrogant and in your face for the sake of seeing your face retreating out of their space, with thundering bass and a vocal resonating with indie class morphing into a solid roar that the darkest thrash vocalist would nod respectfully at – you’d be close.

Well… JP Carroll, vocalist for Swerve City, also has a solo project called Arrays. Now, I have used a couple of acts from the late 80s and 90s for a term of reference, with the party-hard, sneer-fest rock undertones of Brooklyn’s naughtiest white rap trio as the instrumental composition, mixed together with the silky vocal of Ian Broudie and his own legendary Brit Pop solo project, the Lightning Seeds. This is just for your ability to mentally picture the vibe of the mix and the timbre of the vocal – until the chorus that is, when fire, brimstone and fury emanate from somewhere deep within JPs diaphragm.

To the song. The mix is very much one that can sit in the industrial hip-hop and mainstream hip-hop families while also being a bona-fide heavy rock song bordering on psychedelia too. There’s a prog rock composition to the instrumentation, and the studio work has taken it and sent it into the stratosphere. This is a very clever piece of production: I like what’s been done here very much indeed. All technical performances are spot on; the guitars are beefy, bottom end is rich and fat. JPs vocal performance takes the melody and runs the show with a fabulous vocal performance. Balls, melody, and I am indeed taking the tune away in my brain, which is always a good sign.

The lyric is interesting too. From the EPK: A hypothetical universe where the world is led to calamity. The song has a groovy lyric video on the You Tubes, which gives you a great insight into the deeper intent behind the words. I sense despair and frustration at our own current plight. Too much money has gone from circulation, too much time has been wasted while the naysayers throw red herring after red herring for the easily spooked to follow down dead-end rabbit-holes. Meanwhile we wonder whether “the man” is really insane, really childishly unaware – or whether Ben Elton got it right first time when he wrote Stark. With evidence all around us, with testimony from science showing everything was predicted (despite growing echoes of the frenetic denials of this ever having been done), are we being led into calamity? Or are we being abandoned to our fate by those who have the wherewithal to have stopped it? Arrays wants to know.

It’s a multi-genre song. It will fit on commercial radio, it will fit on both George or the Rock. You can listen to this at a house party. In a club, late, when whatever it is you choose to stimulate your senses with is kicking in. Wherever you’re going to play it, do yourself the favour of turning the volume right up. This music is suited to high volume. It’s got a catchy edge with a ferocious anger at its core.

This should be played lots by lots of people on lots of radio and telly. It deserves it. No wonder – JP has got such a good pedigree in the business. Hugely talented guy. It’s on Array‘s Spotty Fly and Flash-Trax‘s Spotty Fly. Go look for it and listen hard. Damn fine. Massive tick!