Phatchance - Inkstains

With a couple of year's worth of high profile support slots from the Herd to Method Man, Sydney hip-hop artist Phatchance has been the result of significant murmurings amongst the Aussie Hip-Hop community. This has led to the release of his debut album, 'Inkstains,' a record that attempts to fill a niche untouched by the genre.

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Where did Aussie Hip-Hop come from? It seemed like with the snap of someone's fingers, an entire musical style had arrived, spread its roots and established itself as one of the most recognisable genres in Australian music. Now, I'm no historian on the subject; Aussie Hip-Hop started for me in the early 2000's with 1200 Techniques and The Herd, but after 'Karma,' '77%' and the Hilltop Hoods, I stopped paying attention to what was, at the time, something exciting and unique. A decade later and it seems like innovation is a word that, to the casual listener,  hasn't been placed in the vocabulary of the genre's players. The signature vocal drone, intonation and boom-ba-bap beats are present in almost anything being released in the genre, and for someone with a limited knowledge of what it all means, it seems to get damn easy to pass off any release as more of the same. But is repetition really unique to Aussie Hip-Hop? How many people complain about Buddy Guy or Taj Mahal having a rhythm section playing 12-Bar Blues? And how is it any different to the hundred indie outfits with jangly guitars, or New Zealand dub acts smacking a few seconds of echo onto everything they do? To an extent, it's these staples of a brand of music that define a genre...and without a genre, how the hell can you write lengthy, irrelevant introductions to an album review?

This brings us to 'Inkstains,' the debut independent release by Sydney artist Phatchance, an album that sits firmly rooted in the Aussie Hip-Hop genre  with touches of latter day R&B and Indie. 'Inkstains' is the record that is the cause of that opening paragraph's murmurings, making it the catalyst that has made me curious about Aussie Hip-Hop for the first time since the line '77% of Australians are racist.' Any album that makes you reconsider your preconceived notions of an entire genre is definitely one not only worth listening to, but talking about as well. Phatchance has thrown together a set of tracks that cover a whole range of influences from Aussie Hip-Hop's roots. From the disco/funk-inspired intro of the title track 'Inkstains' to the darker overtones of 'Mountain of Glass,' this album succeeds in providing a smorgasbord of flavours throughout. Tracks like the sombre 'Build it Up' are reminiscent of Indie/New Wave outfit The XX, whilst 'I Don't Know' has crooning vocal moments that are a staple amongst pop R&B efforts, making for an interesting and broadly varied album.

As far as highlights go, there's not much in the genre that I've enjoyed more than 'The Catchy Song,' a track that spends its entirety taking the piss out of music. Much in the vein of Pez's 'Festival Song' (360 from Pez is featured on the track, the Festival Song of which is also poked at), the track is filled with superbly written rhymes taking a humoured jab at commerciality. From the line 'we can climb the charts until I'm picking lobster meat out of my teeth with my least favourite ARIA' to the claim that Kanye West's logical follow up to music would be an auto-tuned porno, it sets itself up as an instant classic, one which by all rights, should be smacked straight on high rotation at Triple J, which is about as ironic as irony gets.

'Inkstains' is as good as anything that has come out of the depths of Aussie Hip-Hop. It's of a high enough quality to match anything put together recently by the seminal Hip-Hop benchmarks of the Herd or the Hilltop Hoods and serves as a very impressive debut for Phatchance. However, I still can't get past the fact that it doesn't really sound that much different to what I was expecting. There's a slice of musical snobbery and cynicism inside me which can't get past the fact that it still sounds like generic Aussie Hip-Hop to me, a genre which still seems to possess the same hallmarks now that were present back in the late 90's. Whilst 'Inkstains' is obviously unique in many aspects, there's just not enough in there which speaks to me from my lack of interest in Hip-Hop to really turn me onto it, but the feat lies in the fact that it actually got me to listen. That's no mean feat at all, and I don't think I'm the only one who'll be touched by the album in that way.

'Inkstains' is out now independentally with Obese Records Distribution.