Bones & Beeker
Minneapolis’s Anthony Newes & BK-One (oka Rhymesayers DJ Brendan Kelly) together are Bones & Beeker who just delivered the follow-up to their self titled 2015 album with their fresh EP Inside a Different Mind available from Wax Poetics Records. The new EP share some new edits, renderings & remixes from their previous album with cameos from Brother Ali, Cut Chemist, Open Mike Eagle, P.O.S. & more. The group develops a penchant for painting atmospheric productions & delivery with harmonies & moods that virtually levitate between the heavens & the asphalt paved earth.
The song “A Song for Al’s Dead Mother” featuring Open Mike Eagle works like a solemn epitaph that grapples with the loss of a matriarchal figure. B & B bring beautiful & heartbreaking lamentations that describes the heavy sentiments felt when the care and comfort of mom is no longer around, reinforced by Open Mike’s delivery that is presented like a eulogy & a reckoning. Sorrow is displayed in the maudlin melodies & sobering-sorting-out of all the particulars experienced when it feels like your world has become a void. Brother Ali’s loss is reverberated & sent out endearingly like a dove of comfort & peace for everyone else too who has lost a family member close to them.
The Cut Chemist remix of “World Behind” (previously found off Bones & Beeker’s self-titled) brings the old & new worlds a little closer together. The funk-foundation is made even wavier with a psych-styled bent that maintains an organic rhythmic core at all times while advancing the harmonic meditations to even higher points of existence. Chemist’s take on B & B’s original makes 2018 feel like it’s 1968 all over again, where the track is modeled to ascend upward from the ground & to the infinity of the cosmos. Listen & let yourself become surrounded by enlightenment that leaves the conventional world as you once know it far, far, far behind you as you become lifted toward a new feeling of peace.
Bones & Beeker’s Anthony Newes & BK-One penned the following exclusive introduction to the new EP:
Inside a Different Mind is a remix EP that is a continuation of our unlikely collaboration. Bones & Beeker is far from what you’d call a normal group, and we wanted this remix to reflect the uniqueness of what we’re all about. As a result, we chose to work with artists that would take our ideas and funnel them through their own perspectives.
Minneapolis is a gem of a city; rich with diverse artists. It seems only fitting that we’d reach out to some of our friends. The track “Each Time I Die” that P.O.S. raps on could have easily been a hip-hop track if someone had gotten to it before I added the lush vocal arrangement and melodies. But his rapping on it makes perfect sense and feels right. I feel similarly about “Heartbroken in Love”, which is the track we did with Brother Ali. It was only a matter of time before we worked with him given BK One’s history, and it turned out great. Zulu Zuluu (who have since renamed their band Astral Blak) was the only group to take one of our tracks and truly re-imagine it. And we love it.
Outside of Minneapolis we connected with Superblack, Open Mike Eagle and Cut Chemist. What a privilege to collaborate with these artists! Prince Paul of Superblack is obviously legendary having produced early De La Sol. And Open Mic Eagle is doing it up right now. But I think my favorite track is the one Cut Chemist did called “World Behind”. Bones & Beeker wrote and recorded that song in about an hour or two at most. From what I understand, the same is true of the work Cut did on it as well. The song happened so naturally for everyone involved that it’s hard to take even credit.
Bones & Beeker’s Inside a Different Mind EP is available now from Wax Poetics Records.
