Ebony Bones Artist Review



Posted: Thursday, June 04, 2009

by James Hay
Avenue61

Ebony Bones is terrifying. Equal parts cartoon character, carnival queen and African warrior; her identity is as schizophrenic and surprising as her music, which borrows from genres as disparate as punk and afrobeat. She mashes sounds gleefully in an attempt to create something new; and thanks to appearances in Europe and at this year's SXSW music festival with her epic, colourful entourage/live band, her whirligig

persona and experimental approach to music have already won international approval. By no means your average singer-songwriter, Ebony Bones uses trumpets, synths, sound samples, electric guitars and cowbells, among other instruments, on her forthcoming album Bone of My Bones (biblical reference alert!), and has played many of the instruments on the record herself.

Warrior, a track from the forthcoming album, is essentially an inner-city playground spat set to music. Ebony's vocals are bloodthirsty catcalls, and an army of handclaps, the signature sound of this song, are reminiscent of those complicated clapping games little girls play. In contrast to its impetuous, youthful elements, the song's lyrics are dark, primal and intense. As you are told to "march, march, march, like a warrior", you wonder whether the relentless, hollow, rhythmic claps are actually meant to be a tribe of

wronged warriors stomping into battle. In the verses, the gut-shatteringly low bass, insouciant guitar riff and hissing cymbal crashes answer Ebony's calls, which are shrill yelps inflected with equal measures of London attitude and accent. The song eventually breaks down into a chaotic, nightmarish conglomerate, with earlier vocal lines piling on top of each other. Fizzing cymbals, mad electronic beeps and goading howls complete the mix. Surprisingly this is stripped back at the very end, leaving the handclaps that opened the song and the word warrior' to linger in the mind.

If you think Ms Bones, a.k.a. 24-year-old Ebony Thomas, looks familiar, you probably spent the late nineties and some of the noughties watching the naff Channel 5 soap Family Affairs. She played Yasmin McHugh in the series until it was axed, and I reckon the slightly unhinged flair for performance she demonstrates in her live sets shows that she is relishing the creative freedom and independence gained by leaving her frothy soap roots behind. Warrior is a fast-paced, energetic and menacing track that would be the perfect foil for bouts of raving or rocking out. Despite the mishmash of influences and sounds discernable in her music, Ebony Bones reminds me most of a punk artist. She strikes me as being an anarchist at heart, and her free-spirited irreverence is infectious.

Ebony Bones' single The Muzik is out on May 11.



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