East of England punk-rap artist $ebbuku has released a new single, ‘Merk It’, following a BBC Radio 1 premiere and his first appearance at Reading Festival earlier this year.

The track began with Sebastian Bates thinking about the growing use of artificial intelligence in music and other creative work. “‘Merk It’ began as a feeling of frustration. The ongoing battle between man and machine,” he says. “With the rise of artificial intelligence being used in media, music and creativity there begs a question… When does art stop being art?” Rather than trying to answer that neatly, Bates and the musicians around him took the idea into a studio and made as much noise as they could. “Myself and my fellow breakbeat brethren took this idea and threw the dice, expressing the struggle of being a human in a world built on code and binary,” he says. The setting was hardly glamorous. They drove out to a studio “in the middle of nowhere”, tucked between a garage and a dog groomer beside a river. “And decided to do the one thing we do best. Kick up a fuss.”

‘Merk It’ is built around live drums, analogue bass, electronics and distorted guitar, with Bates moving between rapped verses and a barked chorus. It pulls from punk, hip-hop and rave without trying too hard to separate one thing from another. For Bates, the recording also became a reminder that making something properly can be awkward, expensive and slow. “Creating art is difficult,” he says. “The easy route seems to be the road most travelled and it’s sometimes necessary.” He is just as clear about the other side of that. “Nothing brought me more joy than driving hours into the county, spending a huge amount of money, trying and testing riffs that may or may not work, sacrificing my time and social life and making as much of a racket as humanly possible… but it will always be worth it.”

$ebbuku has spent the last few years building a following around Norwich and the wider East of England, with appearances at Reading Festival and Brighten The Corners, a headline show at Norwich Arts Centre and support slots with Monster Florence and The Mouse Outfit. His earlier EP has passed 50,000 streams, and the new material also sees him working with a producer he grew up admiring.

Headline credit: Demi Hopkins

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