New Music – Stephen Durkan ‘I Want’

Piercing poetry coiled in intricate instrumentation with a powerful punch that draws blood and then tenderly stitches up the wound.

Every line provides a prophetic and profound statement that seems to be at constant war with itself. The track has this frantic dissonance that is delightfully devouring itself.

The duality and confusion of the ever changing needs of a content existence is a universal truth that we’ve all experienced. The track is a jagged and fuzzy riff on Slyvia Plath‘s fig tree passage that growls with snarling teeth at the impossibility of the infinite choice freedom.

There are so many individual lines that dazzle with charming wit and wordplay that they work just as well in isolation as they do part of the dazzling whole.

Sometimes when poets decide to add instrumentation to their work it is more of an afterthought than an actual cohesive musical project. Stephen Durkan definitely doesn’t fall into that category, riding the beat beautifully into its deep and dark depths with power, passion, energy, and content.

The music is provided by Niko O’Brien of Upcycled Sounds and it evolves and progresses over the course of the track matching Durkan‘s mad dashing dance lyrically.

Their are moments of complete freakout where the tempo speeds up with the thrashing drums and the lyricism pounds its head against the wall.

Lyrically you can never outshine a poets pen and the track is prickling with the static electricity of that energising creativity. There are moments of humour and a delightful duality that plays with one line ferociously tearing through the last.

If this is a taste of what’s to come we cannot wait for more. It has the power of punk, the narrative storytelling of folk, the lyrical depth of emotion of blues, and the raucous rhythm of hip-hop.

Wordplay wound with wizardry around a deviant and dissonant soundscape.

Words by Matt Miles.

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