Disc rating|Sometimes the songs on Jesse Markin’s Pump album are pumped so full of stuff that it’s hard to breathe next to them, writes critic Arttu Seppänen.
Rap / Album
Jesse Markin: Pump. Wild
★★★
Already by Jesse Markin from the first singles it was clear that there was more to come. Still, I wouldn’t have thought that in the current media environment, English-language rap would pass even the prime time for dance and adventure shows.
Markin, who deservedly won the Teosto award, has gone in a delightfully different direction than the others. Breakthroughs in the current domestic market are hardly made in English.
Third solo album Pump is sure to be done by an artist with an established and recognizable design language. It includes a versatile combination of hip-hop and alternative rock. Markin’s strength is often in texture, i.e. rhythms and melodies. Glow put some movement in the legs, reggae legend Ranking Joe supplemented by Nitromethane in turn to the head.
Markin is supported by a compact and competent band, which is also very entertaining live: Nicolas “Leissi” Rehn (guitar), True Rautiainen (keyboards, bass, programming, percussion) and Teppo Mäkynen (drums). Mäkynen’s fluid but precise, jazz-speaking drum work is recognizable from the album as well, such as in Why We Dance.
As On Markin’s previous albums, the songs are of high quality and sound rich in arrangements. But in some places the tracks are really full like on Oasis’s third album With Be Here Now (1997) as konsana. In the market, the pursuit of intensity easily turns to restlessness and chaos.
Of course the name of the album is Pumpbut sometimes the songs are pumped so full of stuff that it’s hard to breathe next to them. It raises the question: what is the rush here, what is being covered up here.
Ulosanti, i.e. flow, is about going and dissolving movements. You’d be happy to listen to it, even if Markin were reading the phone book. Markin’s music is very physical and the lyrics and delivery are often about movement. The lyrics often explicitly move towards something: up, forward and down, for example towards the fire. Tampere’s dialect is known for moving forward!
The disk the themes could be the search for connection, love, togetherness and the movement between these. End of the album For Your Patience reflect on the ended love affair with peace and gratitude.
Markin is a kind and good-natured writer. He is self-confident, but doesn’t threaten in his lyrics, but always pushes out the innermost with an optimistic attitude. In this way, he positions himself more as a part of hip-hop’s conscious and contemplative tradition.
But despite that, you also miss a certain impact, memorable lines, metaphors and symbolism that stick as pictures. Markin often has interesting ideas behind his songs, but the writing itself does not always bring out these ideas well enough. Markin’s wheels are spinning, but sometimes it would be good to stop them for a while.
With all his flaws, Markin raps in English at a level that sounds international.
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