RAPPERS RETURN
Vancouver’s Swollen Members are back to their old selves
Vancouver- based rap group Swollen Members is back to its old self again, and the trio of Kiley “Prevail” Hendricks, Shane “Mad Child” Bunting and producer Rob the Viking couldn’t be happier about it.
Speaking from their tour bus before a show in Red Deer, Alta., Hendricks describes the group’s eighth studio album, Beautiful Death Machine, as a “revisit to our earliest days of Balance and Bad Dreams, Black Magic, those sort of albums where it’s just very intense musically.”
To help him get there, Hendricks turned to an old habit he just couldn’t kick — literature. Right now he’s reading Joseph Conrad’s 1907 classic, The Secret Agent, a meditation on terrorism at the end of the 19th century from the author of Heart of Darkness.
It’s not necessarily the way you imagine a musician on the road killing time but Hendricks says he always finds inspiration from “thick reading.” In the first song, Inception, he even name- checks Shakespeare, Tolkien and T. S. Elliot.
“What I really look for in authors is the word structure, the word play,” he says. “Are they short sentence writers? Are they long passage writers? Where do they make their impact as far as giving voice to their characters? Those are the things that really help influence my lyricism.”
Mad Child, on the other hand, draws heavily on cinema. He “delivers his rhymes like a director,” says Hendricks. “He knows exactly where he wants those words to land, the cadence, the pace.”
But it’s not just the narrative arts that inspire the duo. They also appreciate design. The band looks for lyrical inspiration in everything, from food to fashion. “As Mad said in one of the songs, we love fine furniture,” Hendricks points out.
That’s why he decided to start his own lifestyle blog, PrevailPrevail. com. The site takes cues from GQ, Esquire and Scout Magazine and already has a growing stable of contributors writing on everything from Vancouver- made olive oil to Hendricks’s favourite vintage barbershop.
“One of the big reasons we started the site is I wanted to be able to show people insight into what actually inspires me as an individual, which is everything that goes into the lyrics,” he says.
“I want to be able to show people I’m an appreciator of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Bramwell Tovey’s great skill as a conductor, that I go to the operatic performances and ballet.”
Although he admits that Vancouver is packed with similar magazines, he hopes he can use the band’s endless schedule of touring to give the site a global perspective.
“I’ll get to offer a piece of London, a piece of Paris, a piece of Moscow and so on,” he says.
“I want to give it a broader international scope, including some writing friends of mine from New York, L. A., ( and) Chicago that’ll bring also our southern neighbours a bit of shine to it as well.” But connecting with fans south of the border has been a challenge for Swollen Members lately. In 2011 Mad Child ran into problems at the American border where he was stopped because of his alleged connections to the Hells Angels. Bunting hoped to be moving freely in time for this tour, but in March the duo had to cancel a date in California.
They’re banking on the issue being cleared up in time for dates at this summer’s Vans Warped Tour. “It’s just a papergame that we’re going through,” Hendricks says.
Even with Bunting’s troubled past out of the way, it isn’t always smooth sailing for Swollen Members. Hendricks took a tumble at a show in Calgary a few weeks ago, which means he might not get to hit the slopes when they visit Whistler for the outdoor concert series at the World Ski & Snowboard Festival.
He says it was his worst stage injury since he fell close to six metres off a stage when they opened for Snoop Dogg and Method Man a few years ago. But he’s not letting a little thing like a fall get in his way.
“For performers that leave everything on stage when they get on there, it just ends up, unfortunately, becoming a law of averages, a law of probability that eventually with X- amount of shows, some may go awry,” he says.
“So it’s always a good reminder that we’re human, but it’s also nice to see the compassion and understanding side of the audience as well. Knowing you’re a little dinged up, they rally for you. It’s the nature of the job.”
Swollen Members
April 18, 9: 30 p. m. | Commodore Ballroom
Tickets: $ 34.77 to $ 46 from ticketmaster. ca
April 20, 4 p. m. | World Ski & Snowboard Festival Outdoor Concert Series, Main Stage in Skier’s Plaza, Whistler Village World Ski & Snowboard Festival
April 12 – 21 | Various locations, Whistler
Info: wssf. com World Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler is an annual 10- day celebration of downhill sports, music and arts. Other events this year include State of the Art, an exhibit dedicated to cutting edge visual talent, The Olympus 72hr Filmmaker Showdown and the Mountain Multiplicity Show, a multimedia event focused on storytelling. Late night events include a host of DJs at the Bud Light Apres Series.