The important thing to remember here is the cover of the CD: a park, either at dusk or dawn, the sky a strange pink, swings and roundabouts unswinging and untouched, and from this distance it looks like a stage set; above and to the left of the park, Giggs stares downwards, deep in thought. The green-on-black credits at the top read GIGGS STARRING IN: WALK IN DA PARK.
So we have to remember that the 70 or so minutes of the album are in effect a film; one grounded in some of the rawest reality you're likely to hear this or any year, but its chief architect is playing a character. How close to or far from Giggs' real life this all relates is not for me to say; suffice it to say that I wouldn't wish the life described in minute, bloody detail here upon anyone, but of course saying that already suggests a painful degree of misunderstanding.
The setting is "Peck-NAM," the war zone of nocturnal SE15, and the eighteen songs on Walk In Da Park more or less hang together as eighteen subdivisions of the same basic song; eighteen different perspectives on the same bleakly dark centre; throughout the album Giggs calls himself the Hollow Man (or the Blade) but his world, if it's going to end, will do so with anything but a whimper. Far removed from the nicely digestible ambient instrumentals of the second Burial album, Walk In Da Park is what the real drowning of South London in the credit crunch age sounds like; messy but strict, bloody but governed by its own inaccessible precepts of anti-morality.
The story Giggs tells is the one we all know (but seldom involve our privileged selves in): a life which, as he puts it on "Who Are You To Judge?," "was all drugs, guns, girls and Master P," and which he now wants out of, or rid of. All throughout the record are tales of drug runs and drug raids, gang insults and crew decimations, an eternal night of fast car chases (at the end of the long, exacting gangster saga "Saw" his car crashes - "You're too flipping late!," "Hit the flipping brake!"), moonlit flits, loveless love (rarely has a party sounded so determinedly joyless as on "Open Up" with its brutalist Numan synth riffs, despite Giggs' midsong wink, "We're all adults, and we all love sex!") and death, death and more death.
The suite-like nature of the work is emphasised by the use of recurring leitmotifs, the "Uummm!!!" sample (possibly from Eminem and there's even a track named after it) whenever a dire crime is about to be committed, and a strange high vocal "pop" once damage has been done. But brutal, early and bloody death is the commonest recurrence; if anyone really wants to go beyond the "Disarming Britain" media facade and find out exactly what is happening in the "broken Britain" of this age and why it's happening, then go no further than Dubz' extraordinary and explicit tirade at the climax of "Pitching All Da Time" or, far more frighteningly because it's phrased so nonchalantly, the similar roll call on "Let 'Im Ave It." The police are regarded with amused contempt ("legal gang members wearing plain clothes" Giggs snarls on "Bring The Message Back," a key track where, above dismantled gospel voices and stately organ, he explains exactly why he is drawn to express "the pain and the essence"); on the fabulous "Cut Up Bag" ("UK we put cane in the cut up bag") with its soundtrack of Soft Cell after some serious cane ingestion, all slum one note synths and distinct glockenspiels - an ode to an M25 on which even Iain Sinclair wouldn't dare to venture - Giggs encourages driving listeners to wind their windows down and blast its bassline out ("No respect for the law!").
The music is some of the most exciting I've heard this year, and in British terms some of the most inventive I've heard in several years (an indicator of the recent major upsurge in quality of UK rap and grime releases: see also current albums by Skepta, Tinchy Stryder, Kano, JME, Wiley and Tinie Tempah); listen for instance to the staggering "More Maniacs" which trundles along with its synths-caught-in-a-strobe-light radiance - with Boost's deep voice intoning against descending waves of electro and the track's brisk multirhythms I am reminded of peak Simple Minds - it could be termed "New Gold Nightmare." Similarly the chaotic pile-up of "Swagga!!" sees a dozen different recordings of the William Tell Overture indulging in a tag team fight, bullets for bolero drums, rounds of machine gun fire of trumpets, and ends with a mind-altering dissolute echo/distortion reminiscent of the end of Walker's "Plastic Palace People." The operatic chorus which heralds "Click Clack!" ("Go and get your gun, we can have a dance") is set against a crushingly hard sten gun doorbell of a one-note synth riff to which are added lost soul voices, speakers from the spatial ether, universes of orchestras as well as post-drum n' bass heedlessness of rhythm. Set against this is the relatively straightforward good time anthem (as good a time as you're likely to get in Peck-Nam) "Make It Look Good" with its 78 rpm Bobby Womack samples ("Across 110th Street," aptly enough) and some sweet singing from J Melo. And, just as Giggs maintains a steady, steely baritone delivery throughout - slow motion, stealthy, assured but maybe still frozen by fear - so does the music settle down and become more contemplative as he looks for a way out; the acoustic guitar/electric piano serenity of his motherly ode of penance "You Raised Me" ("You took me to my first rave") is a good example before one final crescendo; the glitch children's choir stutters of the closing "Test Out Da Nine" where, after more personal infernos, Giggs opts to take off on a holiday, clear his mind - "I'm gonna set out to find peace" is his last testament before the heavy doors clang shut on the album (in "Bring Back The Message" he observes that "this rap thing might be my only pathway").
But "Tempa Tempa" is my favourite track of the moment, and in its matter of fact cold rationalist outlook perhaps the most quietly disturbing; over extensive samples from a song from the stage musical of Mary Poppins where the children are being sent down to face the judge for losing their temper ("Fuck the judge" observes Giggs dispassionately), here is London's own "Hard Knock Life"; except that here Giggs delineates the world which he inhabits in pitiless detail (cumulating in "Now your blood's floating on some fucking Red Sea shit"), all the time knowing that by doing so he's sealing his doom. I doubt we'll be hearing it on the Elaine Paige show in the near future, but Walk In Da Park is the starkest of documents and must be heard, although listeners would do well to remember Giggs as he appears intermittently on Westwood's show; quiet of voice and demeanour, intense of ambition, flawless in purpose.
So we have to remember that the 70 or so minutes of the album are in effect a film; one grounded in some of the rawest reality you're likely to hear this or any year, but its chief architect is playing a character. How close to or far from Giggs' real life this all relates is not for me to say; suffice it to say that I wouldn't wish the life described in minute, bloody detail here upon anyone, but of course saying that already suggests a painful degree of misunderstanding.
The setting is "Peck-NAM," the war zone of nocturnal SE15, and the eighteen songs on Walk In Da Park more or less hang together as eighteen subdivisions of the same basic song; eighteen different perspectives on the same bleakly dark centre; throughout the album Giggs calls himself the Hollow Man (or the Blade) but his world, if it's going to end, will do so with anything but a whimper. Far removed from the nicely digestible ambient instrumentals of the second Burial album, Walk In Da Park is what the real drowning of South London in the credit crunch age sounds like; messy but strict, bloody but governed by its own inaccessible precepts of anti-morality.
The story Giggs tells is the one we all know (but seldom involve our privileged selves in): a life which, as he puts it on "Who Are You To Judge?," "was all drugs, guns, girls and Master P," and which he now wants out of, or rid of. All throughout the record are tales of drug runs and drug raids, gang insults and crew decimations, an eternal night of fast car chases (at the end of the long, exacting gangster saga "Saw" his car crashes - "You're too flipping late!," "Hit the flipping brake!"), moonlit flits, loveless love (rarely has a party sounded so determinedly joyless as on "Open Up" with its brutalist Numan synth riffs, despite Giggs' midsong wink, "We're all adults, and we all love sex!") and death, death and more death.
The suite-like nature of the work is emphasised by the use of recurring leitmotifs, the "Uummm!!!" sample (possibly from Eminem and there's even a track named after it) whenever a dire crime is about to be committed, and a strange high vocal "pop" once damage has been done. But brutal, early and bloody death is the commonest recurrence; if anyone really wants to go beyond the "Disarming Britain" media facade and find out exactly what is happening in the "broken Britain" of this age and why it's happening, then go no further than Dubz' extraordinary and explicit tirade at the climax of "Pitching All Da Time" or, far more frighteningly because it's phrased so nonchalantly, the similar roll call on "Let 'Im Ave It." The police are regarded with amused contempt ("legal gang members wearing plain clothes" Giggs snarls on "Bring The Message Back," a key track where, above dismantled gospel voices and stately organ, he explains exactly why he is drawn to express "the pain and the essence"); on the fabulous "Cut Up Bag" ("UK we put cane in the cut up bag") with its soundtrack of Soft Cell after some serious cane ingestion, all slum one note synths and distinct glockenspiels - an ode to an M25 on which even Iain Sinclair wouldn't dare to venture - Giggs encourages driving listeners to wind their windows down and blast its bassline out ("No respect for the law!").
The music is some of the most exciting I've heard this year, and in British terms some of the most inventive I've heard in several years (an indicator of the recent major upsurge in quality of UK rap and grime releases: see also current albums by Skepta, Tinchy Stryder, Kano, JME, Wiley and Tinie Tempah); listen for instance to the staggering "More Maniacs" which trundles along with its synths-caught-in-a-strobe-light radiance - with Boost's deep voice intoning against descending waves of electro and the track's brisk multirhythms I am reminded of peak Simple Minds - it could be termed "New Gold Nightmare." Similarly the chaotic pile-up of "Swagga!!" sees a dozen different recordings of the William Tell Overture indulging in a tag team fight, bullets for bolero drums, rounds of machine gun fire of trumpets, and ends with a mind-altering dissolute echo/distortion reminiscent of the end of Walker's "Plastic Palace People." The operatic chorus which heralds "Click Clack!" ("Go and get your gun, we can have a dance") is set against a crushingly hard sten gun doorbell of a one-note synth riff to which are added lost soul voices, speakers from the spatial ether, universes of orchestras as well as post-drum n' bass heedlessness of rhythm. Set against this is the relatively straightforward good time anthem (as good a time as you're likely to get in Peck-Nam) "Make It Look Good" with its 78 rpm Bobby Womack samples ("Across 110th Street," aptly enough) and some sweet singing from J Melo. And, just as Giggs maintains a steady, steely baritone delivery throughout - slow motion, stealthy, assured but maybe still frozen by fear - so does the music settle down and become more contemplative as he looks for a way out; the acoustic guitar/electric piano serenity of his motherly ode of penance "You Raised Me" ("You took me to my first rave") is a good example before one final crescendo; the glitch children's choir stutters of the closing "Test Out Da Nine" where, after more personal infernos, Giggs opts to take off on a holiday, clear his mind - "I'm gonna set out to find peace" is his last testament before the heavy doors clang shut on the album (in "Bring Back The Message" he observes that "this rap thing might be my only pathway").
But "Tempa Tempa" is my favourite track of the moment, and in its matter of fact cold rationalist outlook perhaps the most quietly disturbing; over extensive samples from a song from the stage musical of Mary Poppins where the children are being sent down to face the judge for losing their temper ("Fuck the judge" observes Giggs dispassionately), here is London's own "Hard Knock Life"; except that here Giggs delineates the world which he inhabits in pitiless detail (cumulating in "Now your blood's floating on some fucking Red Sea shit"), all the time knowing that by doing so he's sealing his doom. I doubt we'll be hearing it on the Elaine Paige show in the near future, but Walk In Da Park is the starkest of documents and must be heard, although listeners would do well to remember Giggs as he appears intermittently on Westwood's show; quiet of voice and demeanour, intense of ambition, flawless in purpose.
