Dialectrix Defends Self-Indulgent Rapping Style

Every artist presumably thinks what they are doing is new, different and exciting, and hopes to both appeal to fans as well as creating new audiences through their music. Brief descriptions of the new Dialectrix album having its roots in classic hip hop while incorporating new sounds and ideas really do not do the record justice at all, and the phrase sits within the category of what everyone always says about his work. However, from the opening bars of the record's first track Shadow In The Light – a track designed to “punch people in the face stylistically” – it's apparent this isn't the usual promotional preamble.

A very unconventional drumbeat bordering on jazz kicks in ferociously with Dialectrix (real name Ryan Leaf) launching into his rhymes with a deadpan seriousness that really sets the tone for the record to take itself seriously in the best possible way.

Once again Dialectrix has collaborated wholeheartedly with Sydney producer Plutonic Lab (real name Leigh Ryan) for the entire record, with DJ 2Buck supplying the scratches (except for Fire In The Blood which features DJ Morgs). Using one producer throughout the album is in itself a simple decision that few artists really make these days, preferring to pick and choose beats from a variety of sources to give their records a greater sense of variety, which does not always contribute to a cohesive record. Dialectrix says it was a no brainer to work with Pluto again and is confident this decision has helped yield such fruitful results.

“I had this moment when we were working on the last record (Audio Projectile) where I thought it was going beyond what I had done before with other producers as far as really collaborating and getting along,” he explains. “I always say that working with him is like working with a band. We both used to play in bands in different capacities and different genres so working with him evoked that same feeling of like – I don't feel like I'm just a rapper guy who's rapping on beats. I feel like there's someone here helping me and vice versa. It kind of grew from that and I just feel like I get a different and better result working with him than I do with anyone else. He's also a really good friend of mine and it's just a relationship that's grown and grown to the point where we are going to continuously do stuff together. Whether it's always going to be as Dialectrix or whether we go off and do something else together, I don't know, but I am always going to make music with that dude. I think we drive each other really well – there's just too many boxes ticked not to go with him again.”

This collaborative approach has clearly contributed to the record's genuinely unique sound. Either party has the privilege of vetoing anything they don't think is working, and this constant bouncing of ideas and tracks off each other means that everything has gone under serious deliberation and nothing is taken for granted that it will go on to make the album.

“We kind of just let ideas have their time to either sink or swim,” he says, continuing to explain the working relationship between himself and Pluto. “We're editing each other and helping each other while we write. We throw an idea out there, we entertain it and try and make it work and we both go 'yes' or 'no'. Everything that is on the record we have both agreed on. It's not like previous groups I've been in where if one person really likes a song and everyone else doesn't – because one guy loves it so much it still gets on there. When it's just the two of us we usually agree or disagree on the same things. We have this intuitive knowledge when we are working through ideas and coming up with concepts and these songs, we know straight away if we both feel the same way about it. That for me represents that band mentality – when you feed off each other and inspire and influence each other in real time, in the flesh.”

Dialectrix says that the more they worked on the record together, the better the results were and the tighter the cohesion of the whole project. He says Plutonic Lab kept pushing him to really try and do something that no one has done before, which he fed off and pushed back that same philosophy to Plutonic Lab as well. No idea was too weird or too unconventional to at least give it a try, and Pluto's extensive experience behind the controls meant that he had the resources and skills to implement even the most far out concepts. This constant experimentation has resulted in what is an incredibly accomplished record that succeeds in the pair's efforts to try and create something new.

One thing that really separates Dialectrix from the rest of the pack is his mastery of fast rhymes, taken to new heights on the last verse of one of the album's undoubted highlights Black And Gold.

“I've always loved fast rapping,” he says. “I've copped a lot of criticism in my early years from people saying that it's gobble-de-gook or it's too fast or self-indulgent. Some people seem to like it and some think it's stupid. I like pushing things to the extremities and I know that you might lose a bit of content to the listener if you go there, but I think sometimes you don't necessarily need to know what every word is to get the vibe. It can just be intense in nature. I wrote and re-wrote that track three times until I was happy with it.”

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