Bleep

The leader of the punk-rap awakening is here: 2022 is the year Wu-Lu rises. With multiple releases already under his belt and previous connections to the CURL and Touching Bass collectives, among many others, Wu-Lu has made fruitful contributions to many music communities. Now, the London auteur presents his most definitive artistic statement yet, pulling inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his debut for Warp entitled LOGGERHEAD.

Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid, ending up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record GINGA opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to countless places, people, and genres: from breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and styles, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own. On LOGGERHEAD, this culminates in a tour de force of guitar driven introspection, bubbling up as rage or wandering rap soliloquies.

Take the hypnagogic 'Facts', where paintings of urban London life sneak into the cracks between Wu-Lu's internal monologue, one that frequently relinquishes its position in the foreground to let instruments like gloomy piano chords wrench out the angsty emotions for him. Wu-Lu spits with an intense flow, as if in downtrodden stupor under the streetlights, before fireworks light up with jittery drums rushing around him. ‘Scrambled Tricks’ inverts these forlorn feelings with guitar screeches and swerving tyres giving voice to frustration, the lyrics picking apart the previous anxieties: “Mr. Overthinker, you must listen to your heart.”

While much of LOGGERHEAD deals with internal (and interpersonal) warfare, that’s not to say it makes for a melancholy listen. Far from it, for the intricate soundplay and enthralling storytelling in these punk-rap jams inspire motivational uplift, with a sense of community added by Wu-Lu’s crew enthusiastically shouting his proverbial words with him. This comes to a head on the closing ‘Broken Homes’: a despondent spoken word intro precedes sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them, then explodes in a headbanging furore as Wu-Lu rises above the pain yelling, “Stand, hold your crown, you're bigger than this shit!”

Before this cathartic climax, we see Wu-Lu honing his unique sound. The nascent ‘Take Stage’ signals the winds of change, with whispering strings spiralling upwards. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them: guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge vibe, and the bassline approaches like a hungry shark, thrashing as depth charge rhythms turn the track on its head. This grunge drawl and punk energy is peppered with the raw old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop; laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and annihilating punk screams are contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor. ‘Road Trip’ mirrors this, its guitar plucks rotating woozily before coming to life with wires sparking up a rumbling beat and bassline, rising from its murmurs to contorted, exhilarating noise and defiant roars.

Wu-Lu is by no means new to the music game. Indeed, the expert and concise crafting on LOGGERHEAD shows the skills of a seasoned artist. But with the album’s diverse, fresh mixture of sounds and styles, it’s almost like a completely new artist has jumped out of the gate, fully formed and eager to create. Listening through, you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast LOGGERHEAD sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.