Ghostpoet - Dark Days and Canapés

The fourth album by two-time Mercury nominated grime and spoken word artist Ghostpoet (Obaro Ejimiwe) is darker and murkier than his previous work, maintaining his trademark low-fi rawness, but shot through with political urgency and a splash of funk. Dark Days + Canapés sees Ejimiwe build upon the instrumental influences of his last album Shedding Skin and push for an even more atmospheric and immersive experience. The guitar riffs in the songs Immigrant Boogie and Woe is Meee offer an interesting counter-balance to Ghostpoet’s lyric-heavy songs, allowing for a blend of poetry and ambient rock that at times allows his words to drift through like smoke, sometimes crystallising, at others sinking back beneath the surface to allow a guitar, piano or sound-effect to dominate.  Each song has a different tonal texture, a different quality: unpredictable and untameable, it is pure musical innovation. The album demands that you listen closely: beneath the beautiful garbled lyrics of songs like Karoshi, (We’re) Dominoes and End Times, is an underlying unease for the social tragedies of our times, from suicide to class inequality.  There is something pure and wild to the album and it feels like Ejimiwe has winched every song up from the bottom of his soul.