Words: Amelia Callister
There's a part of me that wants to say this is all over the place. It's not just the vocal, which one minute is like this dude has jumped up out of Brixton with the street rap/hip hop style, the next like he's a Dublin homeboy. Then there's the incongruous jazzy sax break, and what's more, he then gets a bit soulful too. I had to listen to it twice just to get my head around it.
Individual is certainly the right way to describe Irish newcomer Alex Gough.
Hailing from Waterford, the 21-year-old hip hop/jazz drummer, producer and rapper presents something very different to what has been filtering over the water to mainland Britain hitherto.
New track ‘PLASTIC (DBS)’, out now, comes in advance of an upcoming mixtape, 'FOREVER CLASSIC', out October 2 via AWAL. With introspective vocals resonating over a jazz backbeat, this new brand of ‘self-conscious hip hop’ mixes 80s/90s nostalgia with life’s modern anxieties, and creates something that makes the listener sit up and take notice.
"'PLASTIC (DBS)' is a heart on sleeve, mind dump track amidst the others," reveals Gough. "I have a huge love for jazz and always wanted to explore that side of my music taste mixed with the songs I’m writing. It’s the most sincere song on forever classic, emotionally anyway."
With global recognition beckoning following a prominent sync in Salley Rooney’s acclaimed series Normal People, and with over a million streams racked up on his last project ‘80%’, I think Alex Gough could just be set to become the new face and sound of 2021.
Stream 'Plastic (DBS)' now.
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