Airs Apparent

Shy and retiring aren’t exactly words that you’d associate with most rappers, but then again Slug isn’t your average rapper and his band, Atmosphere, aren’t your average hip-hop outfit.

A series of acclaimed independent releases, culminating with their latest Seven’s Travels record, has seen them elevated to hero status on the underground scene, although according to Slug, there was never any grand masterplan.
“To be quite honest, I don’t really know what we set out to do,” he laughs. “Like anybody else who does it accidentally it was a matter of doing it and then going, ‘That sounds good to me, how about you? Let’s call it done’. When we make the record there are just two of us, me and Ant. We take what we’ve got and see what happens when we throw it all together”.
Where does he see their place on the hip-hop map?
“I’m not really sure where we sit right now. Maybe hip-hop’s retarded cousin or something. Me and Ant make traditional rap, everything’s based on four-four, everything I say rhymes, but with the imageries and insecurities that are rampant in this culture I think we get set aside as being this weird offshoot”.
Seven’s Travels is a great album, one that manages to address the genre’s standard lyrical topics from a fresh angle, as Slug explains.
“I think it’s important to distribute information to the listeners. I’m not mad at artists who make songs about sex and violence; it’s how it’s presented. If you’re glorifying it I think it’s a bad thing. You’ve got twelve year olds memorising the words to these songs. I’m not about glorifying the negative parts of life, if anything I’ll present them and say this is what it is or even why it is”.
The fact that Atmosphere offer an alternative to the norm has not been lost on their audience, particularly the higher than normal proportion of women who attend their shows.
“I still haven’t quite figured out why we have such a large female audience and, to be honest, I don’t know if I want to,” says Slug. “The less I know about what’s going on the more prepared I am to continue doing what I’m doing”.
Part of this different approach has led the duo to sign to Epitaph, the influential punk label that begat Rancid amongst others. Slug is enthusiastic about their relationship.
“They believed in what we were doing, they believe in what the movement’s doing and they wanted to be down with it and study it more. There’s a little bit of a crossover going on and I appreciate it because it’s good to reach people out of your circle without trying. We found kindred spirits there”.

Atmosphere give their Seven’s Travels album a live airing at Crawdaddy, Dublin on April 25