James Hancock

 

This world, this physical world, can weigh down on us. Some seek momentarily relief in the arts. Others lose themselves in technology.

We are thinking machines who still find solace in our primitive, distant nature, and with innovation, humanity is at once striving for constant change and longing for a simpler time.

For James Hancock, hip-hop is not a blueprint with which one builds a house, adhering to the structural norms and the resulting creative limitations. Rather he views it as a living document – to be expanded as needed, and serve a different purpose over time.

His unique blend of  boom bap drum structures, live-instrumentation and a keen ear for samples creates such a cinematic sound, you’d never expect it to be the work of just one  man.

After scoring Talkies Ruined My Life in the Pictures, the Kwiz Massturrz’s 2009 release, James Hancock returned the same year with his own solo offering, Cognitive Dissonance, a lush instrumental EP available for free download.

If the times, as Bob Dylan so-famously said, are a-changin’, someone must hold the remote. Upon viewing a painting one can reasonably assume a painter exists; upon  listening to James Hancock’s creations one can reasonably assume such a remote exists, and hypothesize that this composer controls it.