Straight out of the illustration project of Pete Bott, Messy Eater is a rollercoaster that refuses to slow down, and nowhere is this more apparent than on "All Out Of Time," the last track on his sound landscape melting EP, "Southern Fried." Already an established favourite of BBC Radio 1, BBC Introducing, and Apple Music creatives and tastemakers, Bott's latest adventure sees him combine his musically trained skills with his illustration-endowed flair for a new, heady mix of boundary-pushing proportions. "All Out Of Time" begins with a head-nodding hip-hop groove, bubbling under crackly organ and harmonica samples, immediately establishing that Bott has no time for genre rules here.
The song's lyrics, "I've spent a lifetime mining for gold / now we're all using plastic to pay" offer wry commentary on the state of modern day, balancing humor with derision in a manner that appears both seamless and deliberate. Bott takes the inventiveness of The Avalanches and The Dust Brothers, producers on Beck's Odelay and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, both operative touchstones for an eclectic mashup of sound, and pushes the envelope further. Messy Eater upholds that tradition, following his lone double-tracked voice down a uniquely 21st-century road with weather-beaten Southern US blues, soul, and country snippets coupled to crisp '90s hip-hop beats. The result is a track that pays homage to the past but keeps one eye firmly on the present.
It's a fitting finale to the EP, offering something that feels huge in terms of its sense of fun, something that, in microcosm, embodies the "Southern Fried" playful, surprising, and impossible-to-predict ethos. Every sample, every drum hit, every vocal flourish seems painstakingly sited, but the end result sounds spontaneous and breezy, a musical chat that's happening on the fly. It speaks volumes about Bott's talents that the project, which has already been celebrated in the press by the likes of NME, The Guardian, and Notion, as well as continuing to receive the encouragement of new music champions such as Amazing Radio. On "All Out Of Time," Alt-rock and downtempo breakbeat serve as a supremely pliable medium for storytelling, humor, and simply having a good time. You are urged to hit play and get lost in the whimsical chaos of a song that, like the rest of the EP, rewards attention, intrigue, and repeat visits.
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