Brace yourself for Ninja Tune’s latest signing: King Cannibal aka Zilla aka Dylan Richards, because he is coming hard as hell in his forthcoming record “Let the Night Roar.” We were immediately feeling it and got goosebumps down the spine with the intro (which is exactly what Richards was going for, as stated below), and it’s the sickest album intro we’ve heard in a long time.
Starting with a movie soundtrack vibe that goes into a wild and unique dance hall beat on the second track, “Aragami Style.” You just have to experience for yourself to know what we’re talking about. Mary Anne-Hobbs knows what we’re talking about and if you listen to her regularly on Radio 1, she has already played the track multiple times, praising King Cannibal’s sound, affectionately referring to it as “too dark!”
Before we even listened to the CD, we found the cover interesting and just the artist name and album title Richards chose really are twisted. His music certainly lives up to the artist image and cover art.
Tracklisting:
1. Intro (0:59)
2. Aragami Style (6:14)
3. Murder Us (6:16)
4. Virgo (Featuring – Jahcoozi) (5:03)
5. So… Embrace The Minimum (Featuring – Face-A-Face) (5:48)
6. Dirt (Featuring – Daddy Freddy) (4:58)
7. Colder Still (6:07)
8. A Shining Force (6:12)
9. The Untitled (5:40)
10. Onwards Vultures (5:32)
11. Flower Of Flesh And Blood (6:40)
King Cannibal himself on his music:
I never really started off making music with a theme but at the half way point it really became clear that it had built its own outside of what I was consciously thinking. It is quite obviously, sonically speaking, a violent piece of work, but where as most albums who tackle this subject fall back on its links with horror films I’ve really tried to make this about real life happening outside of our windows, in our backyards and in our small lives. We get trapped into thinking a certain way, doing things we don’t want to do just so we can postpone our ambition another day. It’s about cutting through these things with a positive violence and letting ‘the night roar,’ for the night is when we finally get to do the things we really want to do. The title, Let The Night Roar, is from a speech made by Jim Jones, the man responsible for the Jonestown massacre. Whilst it was a terrible series of events I happened across a recording of part of his speech and it really shivers down my spine and the album title really jumped out at me when he spoke it.
Really interesting and articulate story behind the music, and so deliberately creepy. King Cannibal has already earned the respect and support of The Bug, Bong Ra, Jagz Kooner, Strictly Kev, Kid 606, Knifehand Chop and Ebola.
Before he was King Cannibal, Zilla was best known for a series of well-received mix tapes, including “A Friendly Game of Chess” (with Buddy Peace), “One Foot In The Fire, One Fist In The Air” and his compilation “Watch And Repeat Play” for Warp Records (also with Buddy Peace).
The King Cannibal debut album drops on October 6, 2009, so get your ears ready for the pure, raw darkness to come.
