Bishi
NitpopNary a degree of separation from the late Leigh Bowery, Bishi has a penchant for costume. A key figure in Matthew Glamorre’s dressing-up box, the Kash Point club, she was recently photographed by Nick Knight for I-D and SHOWstudio. Apparently, “her ‘unique’ dress sense” led schoolfellows to treat her as an "outcast" – but her outfits make her fitter for being out; it is her get-up which gets her up: “I’ve got my uniform and armour on / now you’re singing me a sweeter song because you didn’t estimate / how great / to put my uniform and armour on…” It’s a metaphor you’d expect her to use, but it reads literally too. The chorus’ circularity reinforces its point: that whilst it is great to dress up, dressing up itself can make you great. Not just, as essayist Paul Graham wrote, “a substitute for good ideas”, it can equally be a means of expressing good ideas.
Just as opinion remains divided on whether sporting flamboyant apparel is a terrifically canny thing to do, Bishi’s second solo release will be either loved or hated. Its camp, canny cuts are designed for dandy dancefloors, high-BPM eclectro which draws masterfully on various influences. Uniforms and Armour opens with a bounce like Shimon and Andy C’s Bodyrock, but it’s drum and bass in disco clothes. Bishi comes in singing high and clear, her “time and time and time again” chiming with the “tick tock tick tock” of Gwen Stefani’s Japanesey What You Waiting For? Clear English enunciation of lines like “facial blister, bloody eye / the gruesome whisper, the beaten shy” recall Morrissey, but in this merry electro context, her vocals come across not so much English Heart as Heart of Glass.
Uniforms’ approach is followed by Driven, an exposition of Bishi’s ambition. She’s picked her boots out, but can she fill them? “Opened the box, and what did I find / ten thousand voices scream in my mind / you’re not who you could be / you’re not who you are”. After this metaphorical driving, she gets up to some literal vehicular antics on Flash Yer Lights. This madness-style ska chant is accompanied by clattering mashup drums, features a cheeky chorus and a surprisingly congruous burst of dancehall chat. Your Life My Life is Bitpop as Britpop, a little bit like Pulp, with Bishi most cocker-y in her delivery of “all the choices that we make / tonight this could be my mistake / but then – maybe not.”
The final track, Klaustrophobia, is a busy bleepstorm critique of city life. The “choices that we make” here are “sacrifice for pay”, choices based on the the lies of advertising which speaks to our enduring hopes and fears: “it will make us younger, it will stifle death, you can be eternal and not a waste of breath”. Rebelling against this “indoctrination”, Bishi, by the act of making music, makes clear how she believes these hopes and fears should be addressed – with good ideas rather than substitutes for them. While hardly inventive, her criticism is most interestingly personal when she comments on costume. In this dystopia, clothing works the wrong way around: “We are… suited, tailor-made”. It is the wearer who is reshaped, forced into a given outfit, rather than having the freedom to choose "uniforms and armour" which suits them.
Just as opinion remains divided on whether sporting flamboyant apparel is a terrifically canny thing to do, Bishi’s second solo release will be either loved or hated. Its camp, canny cuts are designed for dandy dancefloors, high-BPM eclectro which draws masterfully on various influences. Uniforms and Armour opens with a bounce like Shimon and Andy C’s Bodyrock, but it’s drum and bass in disco clothes. Bishi comes in singing high and clear, her “time and time and time again” chiming with the “tick tock tick tock” of Gwen Stefani’s Japanesey What You Waiting For? Clear English enunciation of lines like “facial blister, bloody eye / the gruesome whisper, the beaten shy” recall Morrissey, but in this merry electro context, her vocals come across not so much English Heart as Heart of Glass.
Uniforms’ approach is followed by Driven, an exposition of Bishi’s ambition. She’s picked her boots out, but can she fill them? “Opened the box, and what did I find / ten thousand voices scream in my mind / you’re not who you could be / you’re not who you are”. After this metaphorical driving, she gets up to some literal vehicular antics on Flash Yer Lights. This madness-style ska chant is accompanied by clattering mashup drums, features a cheeky chorus and a surprisingly congruous burst of dancehall chat. Your Life My Life is Bitpop as Britpop, a little bit like Pulp, with Bishi most cocker-y in her delivery of “all the choices that we make / tonight this could be my mistake / but then – maybe not.”
The final track, Klaustrophobia, is a busy bleepstorm critique of city life. The “choices that we make” here are “sacrifice for pay”, choices based on the the lies of advertising which speaks to our enduring hopes and fears: “it will make us younger, it will stifle death, you can be eternal and not a waste of breath”. Rebelling against this “indoctrination”, Bishi, by the act of making music, makes clear how she believes these hopes and fears should be addressed – with good ideas rather than substitutes for them. While hardly inventive, her criticism is most interestingly personal when she comments on costume. In this dystopia, clothing works the wrong way around: “We are… suited, tailor-made”. It is the wearer who is reshaped, forced into a given outfit, rather than having the freedom to choose "uniforms and armour" which suits them.
