Rave Immortal

Description

Artists that arent bound by any genre can do it all. We listen to whatever we want, we make whatever we want, we are whoever we want to be. They sound like big words from Nyrobi until you hear Rave Immortal, the debut album by ALT BLK ERA, the duo she formed with her sister Chaya in Nottingham in the later stages of lockdown. Fearlessly bold in its vision and unbridled in its execution, this is an album seized by the shock of the urgent, an expression of defiant intention to be seen and heard and never again to be overlooked.

ALT BLK ERA are not just unbound by genre, they run circles around them. Listen to Rave Immortal and you hear the alt-metal of Come on Outside rub shoulders with the earth-rumbling drumnbass pound of Crashing Parties. Hunt You Down imagines a darkwave underworld version of Billie Eilish, while brash punk rap hyperfuels Come Fight Me For It. The dexterity is eye-watering even before you learn that the sisters are only 20 and 17 years old.

If their taut, tinderbox energy seems to scream with a frenetic need to maximise their every second, then there is a reason for that. In late 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Nyrobi was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, leaving her constantly tired and in acute pain. For the first year of her illness, she found herself drifting in and out of unreplenishing sleep for up to 22 hours a day. Amid a distressing time, the one salvation proved to be an online music course suggested to her by her mother. Attending twice a week alongside Chaya, it offered Nyrobi a focal point to her new life, a reason to take on the pain and get out of bed. The sisters reconnected in a profound way, drawing inspiration from those fleeting, special hours. Before long, they were writing songs together.

Without the music, I dont think I could have done anything, Nyrobi now reflects. This album is the result of that sentiment, many of its songs drawn from the emotionally conflicted life experience the two were navigating. On Come on Outside, we hear Chaya sing to her sister: Come on outside/Youve gotta live before you die/They dont know your fight/So they cant say you didnt try. The poignancy resounds all the more pointedly when you learn that simply going into their back garden in a wheelchair was a mission for Nyrobi at the time.

Straight To Heart is derived from a time when Nyrobi went uninvited to her friends 18th birthday party because it was assumed her disability would have made it impossible. Nyrobi speaks of the loneliness and emptiness of that feeling. I most probably wouldnt have been able to join them but I still wanted to feel considered and asked. That would have meant a lot. Instead it felt like I had been completely forgotten. Im not just some emotionless drone now that Im disabled, she pleads.

For a while, the sisters chose to hide the illness, fearful that the music industry would discriminate against them. But, true to the ALT BLK ERA philosophy, they have seized control of that narrative and are now proud to speak openly about the condition, in the hope that it will allow others to share their own hidden struggles. And woe betide anyone who is thinking about judging them for it.

The triple-hit of Upstairs Neighbours, Come Fight Me for It and Run Rabbit on the second half of Rave Immortal is a head-spinning reclamation of their lives, at the expense of no-one. A signal of undefeated resilience, it comes close to capturing the dynamism of their live shows, which, far from being hindered, have in fact been powered by Nyrobis diagnosis, her medicated windows of excess made precious and indispensable. Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds audiences can speak to that, and the duo now hold Download firmly in their crosshairs.

ALT BLK ERAs summer 2023 EP Freak Show made immediate waves, earning a rave NME review and an astonishingly early MOBO nomination for Best Alternative Act, sharing a shortlist with the likes of Young Fathers and Arlo Parks.

Raised on a diet of their mothers reggae and R&B, the sisters found their own musical calling as young teenagers, finding a social shield in the empowering female-led hip-hop of Latto and Princess Nokia, and glorious escapism in the Japanese power metal band Kebyo. They were musical magpies already, even if they had yet to find a space to call their own.

I think Id actually have been quite frightened by the kind of music Im making today when I was 12, Nyrobi says, with a glint. I think Id be a bit scared. But now we cant wait to force feed it down everyones internet throats.

A blizzard of late-night writing sessions after the EPs release saw them home in on their destined sound, their instincts strong enough just about to control the lifeforce that was now cascading out of them.

The albums ten bangers-in-waiting came to life during a whirlwind six-day recording session overseen by Natt Webb at RatCat Studios (The Struts, King Blonde) in January 2024, a symbiotic artist-producer connection that circumvented the need for long, aimless conversations the two parties immediately just got it.

The delirious headiness of the final albums freewheeling sonic aesthetic is a testament to ALT BLK ERAs post-genre freedom, but where the record does have more concrete foundations is in its narrative structure.

The aforementioned vulnerability of Straight to Heart and Come on Outside serves as the opening act, the songs achingly relatable evocations of universal human experiences alienation, anxiety, low self-esteem offering an olive branch to the listener.

As the album progresses with Crashing Parties, though, and our heroes kick down your door, break through your wall and jump through your floor, ALT BLK ERA seize those introspections and make them superpowerful. Through Come Fight Me for It and Run Rabbit, the sisters are forcibly throwing down the bonds of social norms, and imploring the listener to do the same.

By the numinous Catch Me If You Can, their insatiable hunger is careening out of control, a formidable new regeneration of the sisters developing before our ears. And then, the glorious climax of the albums title track, where they have rejected a life of toil and taken the quantum leap through the portal to arrive finally at an everlasting, mythical superbeing; their metamorphosis complete, transcendence activated, Rave Immortality achieved.