It’s Elemental
Blackbeltjonez hooks up with the world’s only cabaret vivisectionist MC… and his monkey butler
In a place like Brighton, UK, one must choose words carefully lest they offend those with sensitive ears and a petty nature. Call a macho hetero ringmaster in this town and he’ll likely become a snarling knuckle dragger quicker than you can say nut-job. Not many emcees within the hip hop circle will allow such a transgression either, but to be fair not many of them write about morphing into owls, offer the sale of ice creams “with an animal in” or dress up in a top hat, a red shiny coat with a cane to accessorise. Brighton is well renown as a place where artistic imagination is for the most part encouraged and while hip hop itself is all about self expression, in a town (sorry it’s not a city) where theatrics and tomfoolery are integral, can a Brighton MC get away with playing the clown or in this case, the ringmaster?
“There have been the odd dissenting words about people not wanting to see rappers in silly hats” Elemental admits. “I’ve definitely done shows where I’ve looked out to a crowd of scary b-boys, wearing a Stetson and thinking that I’d better not fuck this up, but on the whole it’s been all good”.
Elemental was one of the founder members of The Menagerie in 2000 alongside Nick Maxwell, Tom Caruana, and Dr Syntax. In 2004 they were joined by local underground freestyle favourite Koaste and producer Ido, and through a combination of tightly performed live shows, blanket CD distribution and persistent badgering they became one of the Brighton’s best loved Hip Hop crews, and went on to headline Brighton’s Hip Hop Festival in both 2005 and 2006.
“I think we were very lucky to have Ido and Caruana who worked hard to push Menagerie’s ‘Wild Kingdom’ album to local and national press. Working on the album was a good lesson in how to promote and distribute yourselves without having any outside complications”.
For the time being The Menagerie is less of a priority and other projects are afoot. After years of tireless recording and performing, Elemental would be entitled to rest on his laurels, throw away the keys to a wardrobe that would be the envy of Elton John and spend time cramming his face with jammy dodgers and sugary tea, but he continues to squeeze the town’s creative windpipe, choking out more opportunities to spread his crazy goodness whilst getting paid at the same time.
“I’ve learned how little there is to be made by releasing CDs, which is why I teach in MC workshops. The workshops are amazing because I’ve taught kids of five years old to adults pushing eighty and it’s such an easy thing to learn. It’s actually really scary how something you’ve spent years perfecting can be picked up in a couple of hours by a 75 old man!” So who organises these workshops? “The majority is done through the Brighton Hip Hop festival with an organisation called Audioactive who do a lot of youth work in their own right and I’ve also done some work for Gravity, mostly with teenagers from varied backgrounds from all over Sussex”
Exhaustingly enough, Elemental’s extra curricular activities don’t end there. The Victorian Parlour Evenings that originated in Lewes and have appeared in Brighton are a moustache twistingly good case in point. Alongside The Las Vegas Mermaids, a three piece whose act is “part gig, part cabaret, part what the hell is going on” a new outfit emerges, underneath which lies Professor Elemental. Dressed up like Christopher Biggins in ‘On Safari’, the Professor is “a bit of a loser scientist whose wife is cheating on him. He fuses animals together for no real purpose, like the Chimpangoat and the Donkeypeede. And he has a disloyal monkey butler called Geoffrey.” Alongside a travelling freak show, a near naked wild man and twisted magicians the Professor gets to practice his peculiar God complex. ‘All Creatures Great And Small’ it is not. “It’s some dark, dark cabaret that’s developing and getting stranger all the time”.
Besides knocking up an animal cruelty CV that Avon would be proud of, there’s also a second solo album due out, following on from 2002’s ‘Call In Sick’. As well as employing the knob-twiddling producers from The Menagerie, Elemental has enlisted other top local producers Backini, Evil Son and Cut Daddy to help put together ‘Rebel Without Applause’. “I’m proper excited about this – it’s the best stuff I’ve done ever, ever!!” he says, with little concern about the potential overuse of exclamation marks one may have to employ to convey his artistic satisfaction.
“And also available for download on the Cookshop website is Elemental vs. Digital Midgets Mixtape. That’s basically a remix album of my old shit that the Midget has turned into gold!”
But it’s not only solo material that Elemental is working on. Despite the Menagerie being put out to pasture for the time being there is also the Special School project with Joncept and Nick Maxwell.
“Special School is just all out fun at any cost, even at the risk of hurting ourselves. It’s just a way of me and Jon being able to do stuff that we weren’t allowed to do in other groups and to have a bit of banter with the audience – to be a bit of a spectacle.” So could the Special School perhaps follow in the footsteps of The Menagerie on the path to underground greatness? “Well we’re supporting People Under The Stairs pretty soon which will be wicked, although we did notice that a couple of our gigs got cancelled, possibly because our onstage clown pissed off most of the audience by covering them in silly string!”
Assuming all goes well with the People Under The Stairs gig and no angry b-boys rush the stage in protest to a knock-knock joke, would this mean that there would be no more Menagerie?
“Menagerie will be a bit like Take That for the moment – we’ll come together for live shows but we’ve all got our own things going on. Koaste has just done some good work with Black Grass and is working on tracks with Longusto. Syntax is finishing his album with Stig The Homeless Microphonist so he’s the most famous one! He’s like the Robbie Williams, who’s going to end up as the famous one who we’ll need to persuade to hang out with us some more! Edo’s doing beats for Syntax, and me and Maxwell have got Special School”.
And with that Professor Elemental climbs into what looks like a hot-air balloon and sails off into the sunset, with Geoffrey the monkey butler manning the controls and occasionally soiling the basket. His departure leaves you comforted, like that old cowboy chap in the bowling alley at the end of ‘The Big Lebowski’, that there are still eccentric people in existence and that the world seems a better place for it. Although probably not if you’re an animal.
www.elementalmc.co.uk
www.myspace.co.uk/mcelemental
www.comeintomyparlour.co.uk
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