Kharnivor might be the most unfairly unappreciated beatmaker in Australia. As the “trap” phenomenon bubbles over into festival slots and high-profile remix gigs for any young dude with a Macbook pro and a sideways snapback, Kharnivor ’s well-crafted output goes largely unacknowledged. It’s a shame, because his earlier mixtapes Alien Cult , Tigermask and Tigermask II (all unfortunately taken down from the Internet) are stone-cold classics to any serious fan of underground Melbourne hip-hop.
In typical recluse fashion, Kharnivor dropped a new 5-track mixtape, Tygodia In Ruins on his Bandcamp this week without fanfare or publicity. There’s just a Facebook post saying, “I have a life and I go through things just like everyone else, this is an audio representation of how I’ve been feeling as of late” .
Fair enough. So how has he been feeling of late? And what’s Tygodia? Again, from his Facebook:
“I envision a planet called Tygodia, it is governed by two ends.. one a freezing desert where the air is so thin that it is run buy nomadic wizard type life that live by peace and outer being thoughts… the other a scorching landscape with a fixxed star blazing the metal surface.. in between the two sides is a Jungle landscape that is inhabited by large cat / jungle type creatures with a spinning saturnesqe ring absorbing the sky witch also has a form of spirit like ghoul life forms… the plant life reaches the ring and back to the land.. there is warfare breaking out amongst the hot end and the cold end… and the only place it can be fought is the centre… tensions are running high… the tygodian tear has been shed.”
Yeah, this is a very cool release.
The twirling, twinkling keys of opener ‘Water Clinic’ bring to mind the cloud-rap of Main Attrakionz or Lil B . On ‘Star Gliders’ and ‘Warfare in the Tygodian Plains’, Kharnivor channels the epic drama of Clams Casino productions, immense bass and starry-eyed synths giving that arms-outstretched-on-the-peak-of-a-mountain-at-sunrise feeling.
As a whole, the tape focuses on mood and atmosphere rather than party-starting samples or bass drops. It’s tasteful and subtle, underscored by melancholy melodies, mournful tempos and a sense of foreboding—shades of a pointless and destructive intergalactic conflict.
Tygodia In Ruins is a mix of influences—half instrumental experiment, half soundtrack to a sick early 90s sci-fi game that never got made. Visit the Bandcamp, chuck Kharnivor a few bucks and support interesting local music. After all, this is probably the Melbourne sci-fi concept instrumental hip-hop mixtape of 2013.
WORDS BY Matt Nielson
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