Subsketch is the nom de plume of 23 year old Drew Norley, whose apparently been involved in the Adelaide hip hop scene for the last six years or so. Followers of what’s become unfairly known as ‘backpacker’ hip hop will find this territory familiar. It’s heart felt, painfully sincere even. Thematically there’s lots of paranoid self interrogation, and more than a little existential angst – “I do battle in my head every night and day… he’s screaming at himself inside his head… in a well of regret.. a dead rose down a foggy old road”…
The press claims “gritty, static encrusted beats”. However, my criticism from a production perspective, (which I intend to be constructive), is that the thinness of the percussion is what’s letting this down. A little more studio nouse would go a long way here. Also, Wrong Way Turn Back has an extended spoken word sample, which Norley quotes verbatim in the opener and contains the title “Cheaper than Therapy”. I think I recognise this sample, and it presents a bit of a conundrum. When you sample a sound you’re asking listeners to re-contextualise it, which they do automatically if they don’t recognise it. When they do recognise it, you’ve got to hope it still works for them, be it as homage, deconstruction, humour, or because it just sounds amazing. Unfortunately it’s not working for me on any of these levels, what’s more, the title of the whole album is lifted from it, so I can’t help but associate this record with the nasty experience I had with this film, even if I’m mistaken. Point here is that dumping extended slabs of dialogue in a track is kind of, well, risky.
A solo mc record is an exceptionally difficult thing to pull off – and I don’t think this is quite there yet. But having said all that, there’s obviously huge potential and passion for the form here, and in the future we might see something special from Norley. It’s a very ambitious record, almost entirely self produced, including some nice DIY Harmonica, and a few guest contributions, most notably from Zeal (who appeared on the Emergent compilation that accompanied issue 14 of this magazine). It’s also refreshing to see Australian hip hop finally turn the corner away from boring battle raps, party cliches and misogyny.
This could find an audience with a certain type of young hip hop head looking for some intelligent local product, and with continued effort Norley could find a place alongside eminents in the field.
Tom Smith
