LOTEK
International Rudeboy | 2011-04-19 23:28 | Written By: by AIR
The most frustrating part of winning an arts grant is the acquittal. You've been given the cash, you've spent it all on recording/travelling/writing/studying... and while the money was appreciated at the time, it's now time to move on to new things. The problem is that most grants bodies need to be able to report back to the arts department about OUTCOMES, so now you have to slave over a 20 page in-depth report and analysis of every cent you spent... or they'll never give you money again.
When Wayne Bennet (aka. LOTEK) won a BBC Performing Arts Grant in 2005, he spent his cash and then reported back BBC:
"With the Performing Arts Fund money I bought a laptop, microphone and a compact mixer. After flying around Eastern Europe recording with artists from Poland, Russia and Hungary I returned briefly to London before flying to Australia (the flight down under was also funded by the award)".
Now that's an acquittal. Boom.
Four years later, having long moved on from his first laptop and portable mixer Lotek had won a mercury prize as producer of Speech Debelle's album Speech Therapy (watch). They'd worked together briefly before and she was so keen for him to record the album that when she found out that he couldn't head over to South London because of his "Australian Project" she packed her own bags and followed him to Melbourne to record it at his own studio.
When Lotek recorded a brilliant Triple J "like a version" cover of Rock It by Little Red he said of the song, "it works really well as a ska version, but then any single song in the world will sound good as a reggae tune"... he really believes it, the man lives and breathes Ska, Reggae, hip hop and Dance-hall. His production is world class, soulful and creative while his list of credits proves it the calibre of the guests on his brand new album (Roots Manuva, Jimmy Screech, Ricky Ranking, RuC.L, Ozi Batla, Dialectrix and Ciecmate) prove the esteem in which he's held.
An Englishman in his adopted Australian home, Lotek's debut solo album International Rudeboy is rad stuff. Get it.
