The memory foam becomes a colorful, dazzling photo album of global pop.
Skinny Pelembe raided the family album for the video clip for “Oh, Silly George”. Black and white people can now be seen in South Africa, where Pelembe was born, and in England, where he grew up as Doya Beardmore, as he sings, “I think it’s time we emigrate / Feel like an intruder.” Intruder or immigrant, Black or white, poor or rich, past or future?
The sometimes hectic collage illustrates the complexity of the topic, the song with its twisted beat, the electronic noise and the catchy melody brings the chaos into shape. On his second album HARDLY THE SAME SNAKE, Pelembe skilfully, but above all skilfully, intertwines his biography with the pressing issues of the present, asks questions, describes feelings, asks more questions.
The confrontation with racism is no longer superficial as it used to be when Pelembe wrote songs with titles like “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish”, but a constant background film, just everyday life. “Warm, yellow memory foam, rising in my sleep” is how he describes his process in the grandiose title song, in which new fragments of memory constantly appear, sometimes as words, sometimes as sounds, bits from the news and piecemeal from life that is yet to become real want. All the material is wrapped in a sound that is as contemporary as it is otherworldly, drawing on everything and more, a dazzlingly colorful pop photo album.