You may not have heard of Arcane Soakes, hailing from Lisburn, Northern Ireland, he has recently dropped his new EP – Milk Straight from the Udders! With a name sure to grab your attention, you can probably already tell this is going to be something different. You can find the EP below:
Soakes wrote his first rhymes as a child, with his next door neighbour, about killing a man for staring through his window at him. It wasn’t long until his mother found the song, and demanded that he write a clean rhyme instead, and so he did, along with his dad. He left music after that until at the age of 12 he got an iPod touch, and using the notes function he reignited his interest in hip hop, and started writing new material. He’s been at it ever since.
You can hear the Aesop Rock influence coming through in Soakes rhymes, with his abstract style. Rock musician Warren Zefron has also influenced Soakes, lending a melodic quality to his flow. Eminem too, is a big influence as you can hear through the young emcees lyrical capabilities. But it’s not just musicians who have influenced him, authors such as Charles Bukowski and Cormac McCarthy lend to his intellectual style, while comedians such as Louis CK have inspired a bit of humour in the rhymes too.
Arcanes style will be new to your ears. It may go over your head, you might have to look up some things. He refuses to hide his intelligence, and won’t dumb it down like other emcees, it’s the first thing you notice when you hit play. He operates on a higher intellectual level than most, he’s not trying to fit in, he’s trying to stand out, and succeeding.
1 ‘Be Right Here’
The first track on the EP has a happy wee piano melody, as Arcane assures us that when the pylons collapse, and his peers board the mothership, He’ll be right here. He dives right into it with his trademark intellectual style, bombarding the listener with a spectrum of different rhymes packed full of imagery and metaphor, jumping from scene to scene in this picture he is painting with ease. A closer look, a second or third listen, will reveal a deep meaning to each of his rhymes. He astounds, rhyming words like iPhone 6 with hieroglyphs, psychosis with micro-chips, while at the same time packing each line with metaphorical meaning. This song doesn’t just have one theme, it has tonnes. You may call it genius, while another might dismiss it as an attempt to sound intelligent. The average listener may be confused by the style, lacking the lexicon necessary to take in his lyrics. He is catering to a certain audience, who enjoy vivid imagery and thoughtful metaphor, his style is a poetic one.
2 ‘Swill from the Fountain of Youth’
As I listen, I notice the melodic aspect of his rhymes. He’s not just rapping, he is half singing the rhymes to us. Amidst the weed bars and battle rhymes of underground hip hop, this poetic style is a breath of fresh air. This song paints a picture of roads not taken, and so little time, that life is short and needs to be seized before it’s too late. He raps with happiness about his quest for the truth. The sheer amount of time he must have put into each line gives definite replay value, as you will find an aspect of the verse you missed with each listen.
3 ‘Just Escape’ Interlude
In this skit, Soakes seems anxious and worried, he is in trouble. A situation he doesn’t want to be in traps him, with ‘snake oil and blood diluting the puddles of sweat’. A very strange and random interlude, we are left hoping he escapes.
4 ‘And the Atrocities Continue’
In this track, Arcane touches on everything from ‘social engineers that these colonies distribute’ to offering a helping hand to someone, leaving his arm severed. He urges us to trade our ego in for a ‘shiny skeleton key, and just escape’ from this harsh world. I am somewhat confused by the lyrics in this tune, but I am aware that it betrays my ignorance of poetic stylings. ‘Jester never to jig for the harpsichord of a zealot’ had me looking up definitions for a while. It would be helpful to have these lyrics written on a page, to be able to read and ponder over like a poem, as there are so many layers to the song, requiring a few re-listens to decipher the meaning.
5 ‘Dare to be a square in a world of Tetrahedrons (Termites)'
A nice chilled out beat welcomes us into this one, with Soakes hitting us with references to Nicola Tesla, Archimedes and Friedrich Nietzsche, and again it’s a far cry from the drug references and bitches shaking their asses that is modern day hip hop. He speaks of how ‘termites tear down the tabernacle’ assuring us that even the supposedly divine doesn’t last forever. He has ‘Stood knee deep in Gehenna’s Chambers and kept the secrets of these feckless heathens’, which is a pretty deep line. This kid is ahead of his time. Again, his metaphorical imagery paints scenes he guides us through elegantly.
6 'Picturesque Scene'
For the final song, we are greeted with an image of Soakes Studying Sun Tzu ‘by the plunge pool’ as he delves into another story filled with imagery. He speaks of villains pillaging a village until nothing is left, and making off with everything. The chorus may come across as a bit weird with ‘Picturesque Scenes’ such as ‘crops in abundance’ and ‘monstrous pumpkins’, imagery that would be more at home in a novel, but we were promised something different! An image that really stood out for me was of Soakes fishing from a crescent moon, catching rainbow trout. And as quick as that, the EP is over.
In Conclusion:
The poetic nature of Arcanes style stands out from the rest, yet it can be overwhelming too after a few songs. It’s so different, we aren’t used to it. The sheer complexity of the rhymes gives replay value to the EP, as you’re going to have to give it a few listens to truly get it all. You will find something you missed with each listen. The intellectual nature of the songs can get a bit confusing too at times, requiring a google search of what some rhymes mean. This isn’t a bad thing though, as it will improve your vocabulary. All in all, I think Arcane Soakes is a highly intelligent emcee who is ahead of his time, this EP is a breath of fresh air, a diamond in the rough. It will no doubt stand the test of time.