It’s a well known fact that most Englishmen can’t do a day’s work without his cuppa tea. Jon Pritchard however can’t function WITH the nation’s favourite refreshment! “I had tea spilt on my laptop just as we were mastering the album,” confesses the twenty-year-old dizzy hip-hop wizard. “It wasn’t a great time! I’m really happy to see it out there now though and the response. I can finally look back now and smile.”
Young Montana?’s debut album ‘Limerence’, released on Alpha Pup, is an obsessive, attention deficit disordered collage of wonky samples. We have of course been here before, lurching around with JDilla, Prefuse73, Flying Lotus, Dabrye, Paul White, Harmonic 313 and Kelpe. So what’s the revolution? Not much, except the young Coventry producer is keeping up with this scattered pack – and even spinning a few fresh yarns on top. Tellingly though, Jon had actually never heard of Flying Lotus, such was his isolation in Coventry. Then he released his sunshine slab of funk called ‘Sacre Cool’ and the world opened up: “I had no expectation with that track at all. I’d never heard Flying Lotus’ music or the ‘beat-scene’. I really didn’t think anybody would like it. Especially being from England where at the time dubstep was the new coolest thing.”
Despite Coventry hurling up legends like The Specials, and to a far lesser extent The Enemy, its pavements remain parched of a party scene. So where did he fuel his fires from: “I think it’s very telling that Dilla moved to LA from Detroit,” continues Jon. “It really does seem like the spiritual home for hip-hop at this point. My biggest inspirations have been a mixture of sounds from Radiohead to Clark, to Native Tongues Posse style hip-hop. Over the last year though, a lot of inspiration has come from the underground scene in the UK, and the guys I’ve met along the way. S.Maharba, Dem Hunger, Letherette and Blank and Kytt for example. There’s not the tight-knit community here like in LA but they are inspiring people to me, as well as musicians.”
Fragments of different worlds collide in his sonic mix. There’s the harder-edged crunch of ‘Mynnd’ and ‘Legwrap’ that are polyrhythmic rave monsters, excelling at flipping time signatures and phrases faster than your mind cares to count. But then there’s the soulful plummet of ‘Bad. day’, a smoky jaunt that any man in hip-hop would happily lay their name to. “I love the fact everybody seems to have a different favourite song!” rounds off Pritchard. “That’s really what I hoped for. I’d hate to have an album full of fillers!”
Young Montana? 3 Essentials – ‘Dreamhorne’ (Alpha Pup), ‘Sacre Cool’ (Alpha Pup), ‘Mynnd’ (Alpha Pup)
Young Montana? is playing The Lonely Hertz Club in Dalston, on August 5th. Attend HERE
