Rip Space: Thank These People EP

There are many as-and-when bedroom projects that have benefited from the Bandcamp portal, some of them great, others, not so much. The anonymous Scotland artist that creates music under the Rip Space moniker is another who has thrown his hat into the ring and is most certainly in the former category.

The Rip Space story is a diaristic concern. Just by looking through some of the EP titles since the project’s inception two years ago, it’s yet another interesting endeavour from the underbelly of DIY culture.

It’s interesting because Rip Space isn’t just a breaker of rules: he has a flagrant disregard for them. Taking ideas that, on paper, shouldn’t really go together, this perpetual outsider philosophy incessantly goes beyond the borders of guitar music, and there’s no better example than the latest Rip Space EP, Thank These People.

Three songs at under 15 minutes, Thank These People was released to mark the four-year anniversary of the events which resulted in the artist’s diagnosis of autism. In many ways, it encompasses the Rip Space remit in what is ultimately a wicked concoction of bedevilled blues.

Starting with the title track, essentially this is where the worlds of noise-rock and metalcore meet. Not before exploring through sludge’s steaming marshlands and off-kilter loner folk (yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you). The song ending with Rip Space mumbling the chorus to Sherly Crow’s Every Day is a Winding Road. And that’s exactly what this song is. A winding road where the artist in question doesn’t even know where it ends. That’s the beautify of it.

The Green Ripper follows – a bipolar odyssey inspired by everything from crushing alt-rock to a steady diet of Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot. A sing-speak narrative centred on Mother Nature and, indeed, the Green Ripper, this is mind-bending psychedelia inspired by a weekend on the chemical refreshments. But instead of retreating to dark corners and cold floors, Rip Space wrote this instead.

Finishing with Welcome to Mother Earth, Rip Space channels the speed-rock antics of Osees with the absurdity to match, screeching into the microphone before slowly transforming into some lo-fi soiree inspired by, well… Metallica! I mean, why not?

In all its demented aura, with so many boring guitar tropes contaminating alternative culture and, indeed, the email inbox, it’s refreshing to see someone going against the grain in uncompromising new ways. For all the genre-straddling, in essence Rip Space’s Thank These People is a punk concern and a welcomed one at that.

Thank These People is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.