Holy shizzle it's The Shades!
This Sunday at Albert Park in Auckland City, I was very happy to have witnessed The Shades at one of the bfm Music In The Park events. The Shades are a 7-piece group from Auckland and consists of members from One Million Dollars, The Hot Grits and Ddub.
As I’m always looking for fresh talent to expose on my blog, I was all ears as soon as I heard the first rapper spit.
I went in for a closer look. “What an interesting bunch” I thought. They had that classic look of Kiwi scallywag musicians to them. A mish mash of boys and girls all very talented and passionate and in the moment, lost in the music.
The Shades gifted the sweaty sun beaten crowd a heady blend of Jazzy, Hip Hop laden Soul. I particularly enjoyed the compelling and stand out vocal melodies from singer Mimsy Cable. The two rappers who I gather are MC Jellphonic and guest, also held my interest with their skilled rhythmical word play.
Another notable attribute to the band was the female bassist Cass Fresh who's layed back wiggle and shake accompanied her tight bass playing. A friend of mine I spoke to in the audience, declared he had fallen in love with her at first site. I may be mistaken, but I believe I’ve seen her play in a live band for big name New Zealand Rap group ‘Fast Crew’.
The Jazzed up Trumpet/Keyboard styling of Finn Scholes added immensely to the instrumentation as well and the whole band was as tight as a fat chick’s waist band.
I like what I saw and heard and obviously bfm have them tagged as up-and-comers so as usual, go check em out. They don’t have any music videos for me to post at this stage, but they have a couple of nice tunes on their myspace site.
Check out The Shades on Myspace here.
http://www.myspace.com/theshadescrew
And if you like as much as I do you can buy their self titled 2008 5 track EP release here.
http://www.muzic.net.nz/artists/2327/release2673.html
James Castady-Kristament is in the alternative rap group 'JCK'. Check out their music videos below.
