Liverpool’s Courting have spent most of their time on the road promoting their third album ‘Lust for Life, Or: 'How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story'’, but as they prepare to head out again for another run of shows across Europe, they’ve left us with a little gift. 

‘Rollback Freestyle’ is the second single from the upcoming deluxe edition of ‘Lust for Life’, following ‘The Twins (1969)’ in early August. While that track was a lean and punchy piece of dance-punk, ‘Rollback Freestyle’ is a total left-turn into a short, harsh blast of experimental hip-hop with production from frontman Sean Murphy O’Neill and electronic producer Grey Streak, along with a verse from prolific New York rapper RXKNephew.

The song sounds nothing like what you would expect from Courting. Gone is the indie rock energy of their previous work, replaced by a chaotic and unnerving digitally tinged industrial hip-hop beat, reminiscent of some of Clipping’s noisier tracks. The song’s swirling 808’s and crowd applause samples disorient the listener. High-pitched synth swells pierce throughout the back half of the sub-two-minute track before emerging into a swampy outro with massive, distorted snare blasts, where the track then ends abruptly.

RXKNephew, who’s had a frantic time dropping a myriad of albums and EPs throughout the year, flows across the delirious beat with his usual bizarrely funny lyrical style. He drops lines like “I’ll start tweaking like Kanye / I paint your head like Dennis Rodman” and “Don’t play with me I’ll walk to Cuba”. His expressive delivery matches the beat well enough, but the contrast between his humorous lyrics and the at times genuinely frightening beat makes for an amusing listen.

‘Rollback Freestyle’ is a wild and unexpected experiment from the Courting crew that shows their openness to work with interesting artists like Grey Streak and RXKNephew, and play around with sounds that fans may not have expected from them. The “Lust for Life” deluxe edition is set to release October 24 with appearances from producers DJ Streaks and Meg Ward, so it seems we may be getting even more sonic experiments from the band soon.

 

Ash Douglas

@ashdouglas_scot

Image: Charlie Barclay Harris

 

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