There's been a lot in the press recently about the danger posed by mainstream hip-hop, its "cultural identity" (to paraphrase resident youf expert David Starkey), and the outlook on life some people claim it espouses. In the charts, the gargantuan, bloated, gleaming album, Watch The Throne -- a confluence of two of rap's biggest draws, Jay-Z and Kanye West -- towers above all else, a swaggering behemoth of excess and ego. So when you see the little genre indicator at the top of the page, a little bit of perspective is required. The first proviso is that whilst Andy Bothewell's music is quite clearly rap, it's so far removed from the universe of Kanye (and at the rate Mr West is going, our cosmos will soon cease to have much to offer him) as to be entering multiverse territory. The second is that it is also perhaps Bothewell's most personal album, a step away from the historically-minded, at times wilfully eccentric Pomegranate and his earlier, lower-key offerings (2005 full-length debut You And Yer Good Ideas and his 2006 follow-up The Mighty Ocean And Nine Dark Theaters). And here's where identity comes back in, for hip-hop, more so perhaps than any other genre, is a mark of identity, of where you've come from, of where you are, and -- above all -- who you are. If anything shines through in This Is Our Science, it's Astronautalis' nomadic past.
After seven years on the road, a family tree buckling under the weight of strays, stragglers, and adventurers, and the occasional autobiographical reference in previous albums (in particular Somethin' For The Kids and The Story Of My Life), Bothewell has turned the spotlight back on himself. Dominated by movement -- both physical and emotional -- from the very beginning, it is this wanderlust that comes to define the album. The magnetically emphatic The River, The Woods introduces the theme ("Wherever we go, we'll never be lost/some follow the compass while some follow the cross/me I follow roads compulsively till sirens call me off/then I wander eyes closed, following songs") and from here on in, it's rarely dropped. Amidst feverish imagery of mastering one's world, the frantic spitting on the Alias-produced Dimitri Medeleev shows us way, laying down a statement of belief -- "We invent paths they cannot see/and they're too scared to walk [...] we won't be held back, won't be tied up, won't be pinned down".
But this perpetual motion is more than mere itchy feet: this goes deeper, to a veritable essence of being. As much is clear from his dismissal of laying down roots (the metaphorical anchor nothing more than "a coffin nail/waiting for that hammer drive"), and the heavily romanticised insistence on transitory existence pushes it to near sacred, certainly spiritual, levels. Vagrants, no longer a scourge on society, become the chosen few, an enlightened, initiated few capable of seeing beyond into "the unknown".
The flipside to this existential truth-chasing -- which reaches its zenith on the album's title track, a swaggering masterpiece of menacing, apocalyptic gospel and furious, life-affirming rap -- is its eventual futility. "No-one can ever escape all of your ghosts," goes the groove riding Contrails (which features Tegan Quin), and the second half of the album subsequently rides a decidedly lower, more emotional ebb. Midday Moon, peopled by characters all too aware of their own mortality and dedicated to the "Immortalist" Robert Nelson (a key mover in the 1970s cryonic efforts to stave off death), takes the cult to the transience of life to its inevitable, yet logical, conclusion. From this point, perpetuating life becomes a matter of enjoying the moment -- such as on the touchingly balladic Secrets On Our Lips, an ode to the hot flush of a relationship in its infancy -- and holding on to what's important. Closing the album (ignoring the almost extraneous ten-second epilogue of One For The Money) in mesmeric fashion is Bothewell's Lift The Curse, at once a gently mournful, string-laden paean to what's gone before, and a rousing commitment to stay the course, whatever the cost, and do what he has always done: singing, praying, hoping, and "chasing ghosts and dreams/from funerals to birth/in reverse".
The idea of Home could almost be considered central to modern-day society, synonymous with feelings of comfort, safety, and sanctuary: in essence, life's centrepiece. This Is Our Science, part nostalgic recollection, part manifesto, is the album for all whose hearts ache with a gnawing desire to peregrinate. If, like Bothewell, your home is where your hat is hung, then this invigorating, intelligent celebration of life on the move is yours to keep.
