BLISS N ESO - EVER RUNNING, EVER RISING
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.
Following the unprecedented success of their ARIA Award-winning Flying Colours, Bliss N Eso have further developed and diversified their sound on new record Running on Air. Jonathan Notley (aka Bliss) tells Dan Rule that, like fine wine, the Sydney hip hop trio are maturing with age.
Of all the potential collaborators or sample sources you might expect to find on a hip hop record, the countrified twang of Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson would have to be among the least likely.
And Jonathan Notley, the man better known as MC and producer Bliss of Sydney hip hop figureheads Bliss N Eso, is more than aware of the incongruity. “Man, to most people’s minds mixing country with hip hop is a hell of a stretch,” he says in his softened US accent, stifling an almost guilty chuckle.
“Even the label were really unsure about it being on the record, but we were like ‘Trust us, we know what we’re doing, this is going to work’.”
He’s referring to Late One Night, a grimey, gunshot break that flourishes into a chorus hook sampled from none other than Chambers and Nicholson’s 2008 hit Rattlin’ Bones. It’s a track that anchors the back end of new album Running on Air and reveals quality inherent to Bliss N Eso’s increasingly far-reaching approach to the Bronx-born art from.
“The last thing we wanted to do was to create an album where all the tracks sounded the same,” says Notley, who’s speaking from Sydney in the weeks leading up to the release of the album. “We really wanted to paint a nice, wide spectrum of colours and styles and moods, so people could jump in wherever they want and really get something out of it.”
Trawling Running on Air, it’s hard not to agree. The rasping boogie-rock of tracks like Flying Through the City and hyped, Outkast-esque bounce of Addicted meld with the reverb-lashed blues-rock of Moses Twist and dark, jilting beats of Art House Audio. Examples of staid, conventional rap are scarce on the ground.
“It’s absolutely important to see the bigger picture,” he says. “We’re all on this planet together and we’re making hip hop for everyone.”
In many ways, Notley’s attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise. The trio – Notley, fellow MC Max Mackinnon (aka Esoterik) and DJ Tarik Ejjamai (aka DJ Izm) – may have burst onto the Sydney underground in the early 2000s with explosive melange of raw boom-bap and gritty, street-level lyrical attacks, but their rise has evidenced a much wider vision. From underground burner Flowers in the Pavement (2004) and breakthrough Day of the Dog (2006), to ARIA Award-winning epic Flying Colours (2008) – which saw them travel to some of the poorest regions of South Africa to record the track Bullet and a Target with a traditional choir – the trio’s sound and palette has expanded to see them emerge as one of Australian hip hop’s most accomplished and widely celebrated crews.
According to Notley, who met MacKinnon and Ejjamai in early high school after his family moved to Sydney from the US, the trio’s journey has transcended music alone. “I definitely feel like over the years we’ve matured a lot in terms of the lyrics we’re bringing and the concepts we’re expressing, and we were really kind of aware of that when we went into recording Running on Air.”
Tracked in a cavernous house near Hanging Rock in the central Victorian bush, the record drew much of its influence from its surroundings. “It just let us have a bit of peace and quiet and get back to creating and focussing,” he recalls. “I kind of feel like it probably did transcend a bit into the music.”
That isn’t to suggest that Running on Air, produced for the most part by Bliss, man of the moment M-Phazes and wunderkind Hattori Hunzo, lacks the boom-bap punch of its predecessors. To the contrary, so impressive is the record’s hip hop smarts that the group managed to attract guest verses from LA rap heavyweight Xzibit and burning slot from none other than Wu-Tang Clan founder the Rza on the stomping Hunzo beat Smoke Like a Fire.
Suffice to say, it was something of a career highlight for the trio. “We sent him over the track and he really dug it and was keen to get on it and we were just over the moon when we found out,” he laughs. “We’re old school Wu fans, you know?”
“To get like Ghostface or Raekwon would have been amazing, even Method Man, but to get like the motherfucker who started it all, it was jus like, ‘This is history, we gotta make it happen’.”
With Running on Air, you can’t help but get the feeling that Bliss N Eso are doing just that. “There’s the famous quote ‘The wisest man knows he knows nothing’ and it’s very true in my mind,” says Notley.
“We’re learning all the time and I think to kind of close the book on that idea is kind of a step backwards.”
