Goat’s recent, eponymous album hit the listener like hip hop reverse-engineered — a record built to be the perfect fodder for samples and sound systems. Its mix of breakbeats, funk-scuffed guitar, and burnt sonics offers up a producer’s playground waiting to be rifled through and roughed up, but why wait? Scrapping the need for the DJs to come carving, the band’s latest single ‘Nimerudi’ finds Goat entering the hip-hop ring of their own accord.
Removing crate digging from the equation and tapping directly into the marrow, the band offers up a new song that underscores bars from Kenyan-born, Ugandan-based rapper MC Yallah. Created in their Gothenburg studio and volleyed back and forth between Yallah and the mixing desk at Lightship 95 Studios, the cut brings together the band’s frayed sonics and Yallah’s infectious, acrobatic pacing with the sonic sculpting of London producer Giles Barrett.
Goat has long been mapping the shape of fuzzed ‘70s sounds culled from far-flung corners of the world, splicing tape-market aesthetics and poly-rhythmic pounce to a deep bench of Swedish psychedelics. The clash comes to a head on ‘Nimerudi’, with the band devouring their own tail, turning years of aural absorption into a record-crackle ready Bomb Squad cut-out.
Matching the band’s lived-in, lysergic production, Yallah brings her nimble, multi-lingual flow, leaning into the band’s Nordic wrecking crew track with an acumen that’s earned her an honour roll of critical praise. Yallah has been building steam since ’99, releasing a litany of singles and two albums with Debmaster on acclaimed Nyege Nyege sublabel Hakuna Kulala, and her elastic phrasing is the perfect fit for the band’s timeless feel.
Check it out, here
