Goat + MC Yallah - Nimerudi
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 honor 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.
The new single gets its own re-work by 'Salmagundi', the producer alter-ego of Giles Barrett and partner Tasha V. After tackling production on the original, Barrett strips the track down to its bones and builds it back up with a eye on acid-house, letting hypnotic rhythms tear down Goat’s wall of fuzz in favour of dub sonics and speed-slicked beats. The two tracks were originally released on a very ltd 7”, sold with copies of the Out Of The Void, a book that collected the art from Goat's label Rocket Recordings’ history from 1998-2024.
Stream ‘Nimerudi’ via the link below. You can download the track, plus the 'Salmagundi Version' on 28 February.
UP-AND-COMING SHOWS
09-10 May / Eindhoven / Fuzz Club Festival
24 May / Stockholm / Echo Three Festival
29 August / Salisbury / End Of The Road Festival
30 August / Manchester / Manchester Psych Fest
