Sole & Ravi Zupa — The Pyre(Cd & booklet)

“The Pyre” is an audio/visual project that brings together Ex Anticon, hard hitting and mould breaking rapper Sole. And Denver based poet-painter, sculptor, film artist and activist Ravi Zupa.  The release is made up of a  72 page booklet and a full length CD- the CD features Sole’s epic  poem  put to music, and the booklet takes in Sole's words illustrated by Ravi Zupa.

The CD features fourteen tracks in all and finds it Sole reciting and semi-rapping his complex yet rewarding texts over a mixture of lo-grade and 80’s sounding synth textures,  battered  and stark hip-hop beats, and creative yet stripped and worn sample textures.  Musically this is a mixture of Man'sbestfriend (Soles more free flowing and experimental project) 2007 instrumental album Poly.Sci.187, his more approachable Man'sbestfriend  work and the more soundtrack based and moody elements of his solo work.The poems text is a thoughtful, angered and sometimes humoured mixture of social, political, environmental and apocalyptic led prose.  On the whole the album keeps a nice and listenable balance between spoken word, creative raping and stark hip-hop  beat  ribbed soundtrack album.

The 72 paged stapled A5 booklet features a colour cover, and inside seventy tow pages of Ravi Zupa original drawings mixed with and illustrating Sole's texts. Zupa drawings mix together elements of German Renaissance, Japanese Block art, Religious Iconography from Europe, Asia and pre-Columbian South America, 20th century revolutionary propaganda and slight hints of surrealism- all of which nicely deepens and opens up poems text even more.

All in all “The Pyre” is very interesting and rewarding meeting between the avant, wordy and angered poetics of Sole, and the impressive mixed art displines of Ravi Zupa work.