Nick Hakim – Green Twins (ATO)

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Green Twins, Nick Hakim’s debut album, sets up an exciting soundscape to explore. Here he makes a personal stamp of unique vibrancy, backing up his style with soul.

After a couple of well received EPs and singles, Hakim’s first full-length album shows both consistence and progress. Using a mix of ingredients he has provided us with soulful, tastefully placed vocal melodies and nostalgic rhythm samples, harking back to the likes of RZA and The Wu Tang Clan. This, coupled with haunting, flowing melodies, breathes new life into the ever popular Neo Soul scene.

The album seems to have a running theme, of personal thoughts and opinions spilling out of one’s head. In TYAF Hakim questions his existence to the big man himself saying, “You bought me here to take me out.” Later he sings of lost love whilst an acoustic guitar bounces between his now familiar, stylized drums on Slowly. We are given tastes of saxophone in Miss Chew, suddenly thrown into a vibrant, crime noir world (images of smoke, alleys, trench coats and Tommy guns spring to mind).

Throughout the collection of songs we are treated to a variety of stages of consciousness. Green Twins feels authentic and inviting, a coherent and confident style, shaken up with clever selections of instrumentation and curve-ball finales…like the explosion of sound at the end of Slowly.

Nick Hakim is definitely one to watch, to hear and to experience.

Harry Parsons

 

 

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