Young Fathers DEAD LP

DEAD, the winner of the UK's 2014 Mercury Prize, is the debut album from Young Fathers. Against a backdrop of creative resurgence in 'indie' rap, Young Fathers make the sort of uncompromisingly leftfield, forward-thinking hip-hop that has nothing to do with artiness and everything to do with brilliance, all with grain silo production and genuine pop hooks. Early adopters have included Johnny Marr, Diplo, Ghostpoet, and Alt J.

The group formed after meeting at an under-16s hip-hop night at the infamous Bongo Club in Edinburgh when they were all in their teens. Almost immediately they started writing and recording together, initially on an old karaoke machine plugged into a cheap cassette recorder. They are committed, on course, irrefutably aligned with the stars, set to sail the globe like a ghost ship, bringing dread and joy to safe harbors and dangerous docks. Traveling with sails tattered and billowing from a mistral, channeled from the west coast of Africa to the east and the north of Britain, unfettered and multinational. Without passports.

DEAD has been reviewed by the likes of The Guardian (4/5), Anthony Fantano (The Needle Drop on YouTube), Clash (9/10), Exclaim! (9/10), The Line of Best Fit (8/10), NME, and more. Following support from the BBC's Zane Lowe and Lauren Laverne, the band appeared on influential talk show Jimmy Kimmel in 2014.

'Dead' swills a dram of Buckfast, lifts its kilt up in your face and takes you to the Firth of Forth and back. But there's a detour and a half en-route, via a multitude of global influences, political and social commentary, heartache and pain. Young Fathers possess that which makes the best British acts truly special: a singular identity born of multinational mixology.