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Lo Tek Hi Fi.
 If the name "Lo Tek Hi Fi" sounds familiar, it's probably from Wayne 'Lo Tek' Bennett's work with the seminal Roots Manuva, or from his mini-album with Aurelius and Wayne Paul in 2003. 'Mixed Blessings' is an apt title for Lo Tek Hi Fi's debut album, referring to their blend of Caribbean and English influences. With a strong reggae feel to it, this album offers up some intelligent hip-hop as well as bold beats and bright melodies that smack of an old-school dancehall party.
The album features guest appearances from Roots Manuva, Sandra Melody and Earl J, which just adds to the already varied vocal stylings of Aurelius, Lo Tek and Wayne Paul. Each member of Lo Tek Hi Fi not only has refreshingly different vocal styles, but quite clearly come from completely dissimilar areas of musical interest and history. But it all somehow seems to come together. "After the Roots Manuva tour I got the bug for performing," Bennett explains. "Up until then I was a producer-engineer type of person. I didn't really want to jump into the deep end and go out there all on my own, so I found some like-minded people, like Wayne Paul and Aurelius, who had been involved in that area a lot longer than me. I had jammed with a lot of people where it didn't really gel, but it just so happened that the contrasting voices - the deeper tones of Aurelius, Wayne and myself rapping - worked out nicely.
"We went into making the album with more of an intention of what we didn't want to do. We didn't want to go down the road of it sounding like a compilation album, the typical UK urban album. They like to cover all the bases, do everything faithfully. You know, if they do a drum'n'bass track it has to sound like the purest drum'n'bass and the same thing when they touch on garage or hip-hop. They try and do it in the purest form so that it just sounds like a compilation album. We wanted to make sure it sounded like a whole when played continuously, but at the same time didn't sound like every tune was the same.
With an album that draws from so many sources (hell, it's like the Beach Boys made babies with Leftfield), it's fair enough that Lo Tek Hi Fi weren't sure what people would make of it. "People find it very difficult to just talk about something, and if they can just define it in a couple of words, then they are much happier. It's the era we live in, where people want things on demand, and things are abbreviated with no vowels so they can be sent in an SMS," he sighs. "They just get the lowest common denominators and put a hyphen in between them. They think, alright, it's got violins: classical. It's over 100 bpm: bounce. So, classical bounce, that's what we'll call it [as in Showdown from 'Mixed Blessings']."
Bennett is on the last few days of his Australian tour, which unfortunately missed Adelaide. "It's been absolutely great, to the point where I'm thinking 'hmmm, how much is land over here?'" he laughs. "In London and the rest of the UK, you quite often find yourself performing to people who are your peers rather than your punters. Everybody in the crowd is a singer, a dancer, a rapper, a writer, a performer, so there's an element of 'yeah, I know what you do, I know how you do it, so you better be good.' Sometimes that attitude helps, because when people appreciate what you do and give a good response it means a lot. There's none of that illusion, that you're superhuman because you can rap. It means more than people cheering because they've had a few half-priced drinks. But at the same time it's really nice to be genuinely appreciated with no-one thinking 'oh yeah, I can jump up there and do better.' I feel honoured to be on the stage, and thankful to everyone for having a good time and just appreciating what I do. Everybody's up for it: ask for a bit of a crowd response and everyone's happy to give it to you without thinking what they look like."
Even so, he's clearly a little homesick. "I'm going back home, where I'll kick up a bit of stink until someone pulls their finger out and we can travel back here with the full crew. I'll tell them what it's like," he assures me. "We go where we are appreciated, I'm not one of those people that says 'alright, we make rap, let's go to New York and show the Americans we can make rap as well as them.' I'm not going to go out to try and change someone's mind."
Indy Lin
 | 'Mixed Blessings' is out now through Big Dada/Inertia. |
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