Blackhaine – Northside Needs Me

A young boy watches police beat Blackhaine in Mao Morgó’s video for “Northside Needs Me”, and that image is where the song keeps pointing: what kind of place gets handed to the kids growing up in it. Over Wraith9’s surging power electronics, Blackhaine turns on his own reputation, half bragging that the north can’t get enough of him, half resenting how it pinned him to a look and a sound. The noir moods and harsh noise everyone suddenly wanted in on. When what he makes has no fixed shape at all. The violence running through it comes from Salford, his old home, and fifteen years of fallout since the 2011 riots.

Second single from debut album Saints In The Wethouse, out November 13 on XL Recordings.