Never an artist to stand still, enigmatic hip-hop producer Ugly Mac Beer breaks new ground on his latest album Broken Ill. Best known for his scratching and production work, he’s revisiting his adolescent roots on a record that mashes up synth and punk to great effect. At one time these were two genres that were diametrically opposed until they were brought together by New York noise merchants Suicide and Ugly Beer Mac proves himself an equally adept alchemist and fuses punk and synth on one explosive album.

Fusing two genres and playing any type of crossover is a risky business; fumble the ball and an artist can find themselves in a kind of musical no-man’s-land and with no appreciable crowd to play to. While crossover can often sound like a tug-o’-war, a battle between two opposing forces, it’s an obvious love of both synth and punk that helps Ugly Mac Beer circumnavigate this problem and subsequently they form a perfect union. An intro that brings to mind classic Kraftwerk (Trans Europe Express), ‘Press OK’ is intriguing and reels the listener in like a fish with hook in mouth, but doesn’t really give a hint of what’s to come. However, once ensconced inside Ugly Mac Beer’s world you’ll be glad you’ve arrived because the title-track follows and really unleashes the hounds and what follows are choice samples and addictive basslines that beat a path directly to your cranium.

While punk was initially a movement that expressed musical freedom, it soon became constrained by it’s own rules and regulations and woe betide anyone who deviated from the norm. It’s into that original ethos into which Ugly Mac Beer taps and he’s produced a record that constantly throws curveballs (in the shape or riffs and samples), they hit from every direction and it is never knowing what will come next that makes you hyper alert; this isn’t the type of album that you play as background music, it demands your full attention and when coupled with those infectious grooves, well, any one with a pulse will be shaking their tush.

Ugly Mac Beer very much wears his producer’s hat on this project and as such Broken Ill is the kind of record that’ll reward repeat plays; there’s a lot of goodness buried here with lots of subtle nuances hidden deep in the mix and it’s the kind of treasure that will bubble to the surface on successive spins. As such this is a very “visual” type of listen; the words and music combine to create strong images in your mind’s eye. Take the (aptly-titled) ‘AI Sucks’ for example. It’s akin to a pillion ride through a rain-soaked, neon-lit Bladerunner cityscape and makes the ideal foil for Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’. In fact, this whole album has a nocturnal aesthetic, it is as if Ugly Mac Beer has made notes on his various midnight escapades and then presented them in music for Broken Ill.

Broken Ill definitely strays true to the original vision of punk and no more so that on closer ‘FAYP’, a track that raises the bpm to heart-attack inducing levels and suggests there’s a whole lot more to come from this project. Who knows where Ugly Mac Beer will travel next musically? But one thing’s for sure, it’s bound to be interesting.

• Broken Ill is released via Beatsqueeze Records on 22nd November 2024.

Track List:

1. Press OK
2. Broken Ill
3. New Area
4. Dans tes yeux
5. My Name Is Tim
6. Trust My Uh-Oh!
7. It’s not a Dream
8. AI Sucks
9. Bastille Vichy
10. Broken Glass
11. Wolfie
12. FAYP