Some music is hard to pigeon hole. It is often just this kind of music that is the often the best - although it does pose problems for a reviewer condemned to find a whole new pallet of language in order to do the music some kind of justice. But enough about my problems.

Trip (or Alex Child as his mum probably calls him) has just created an album which defies any immediate labelling. Record stores (assuming there are any left by the time you read this) may find it difficult to know where to put Short Cuts.

It’s a kind of fusion of Beat Boxing, Hip Hop, Dance and Indie. The result is instantly refreshing and exciting. Trip takes as his themes the everyday experiences of life: first dates, visits to greasy spoon cafes and visits to the laundrette (although I suspect the exact events of “Laundromat” don’t happen quite every day – unless I’ve been going to the wrong place to get my smalls done)

.Mundane themes have been well exploited throughout the history of Rock and Roll in Britain. It started with bands like The Kinks, progressed through to The Jam and The Smiths, on towards Blur and Pulp then via The Kaiser Chiefs and The Streets to Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys.

All this is done against a backdrop of guitars and thumping bass usually reserved for 90s indie bands like Suede, Dubstar and the aforementioned Blur.

Trip’s songs carry the torch of celebrating British mundanity well. There is a dirty, griminess to the songs which adds to the texture. But what makes these songs really stand out is Trip’s eye for detail.

References to “itchy Christmas jumpers that his daft aunty still knits him”, an ambulance driver’s boredom with Dusty Springfield and a bully’s victim having a “Transformer lunch box” are not strictly necessary, but go a long way towards fleshing out characters and themes. These aren’t just tracks on an album; they are short stories or novellas set to music.

The songs are at their best when they are exploring the most poignant stories. There’s the story of Mike whose first kiss is postponed when his girlfriend-to-be discovers River Phoenix has died (“River Phoenix”). There’s an ambulance driver still saving lives even though his own life is falling apart after the death of “Angela” (“Breathe”). And there’s Mr Wilson, a gambling addict, who stands on a ledge contemplating suicide after losing everything else (“The Gambler”).

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Some songs concentrate on the lighter side of life with terrible jokes cracked on first dates (“he told her about this Christian rock group Guns and Moses/he’s glad she laughs at his crumby jokes ‘cos no one else does”) in “Applecheeks” and an adolescent fantasy about naked women perched on top of tumble dryers in “Laundromat”.

Final track, “Who’s That?” continues themes found earlier in the album with the feeling of boredom with life as it is and a daydreaming for a better future, but eventually descends gloriously into an expletive ridden list of everything that Trip finds annoying: “Pregnant mothers who smoke…..personal claim adverts…..people who are willing to get of their arses and search the whole room for the TV remote because they refuse to walk over to the TV and change channel manually”. It’s a very specific list and ends, unsurprisingly perhaps, with Noel Edmunds.

Short Cuts is an album of two halves, joined together almost seamlessly. Serious, gloomy and poignant songs sit side by side with lighter, funnier tracks to produce a cross section image of real life led by real people.

Hip Hop artists and rappers are often ridiculed for wanting to keep it real while busting rhymes about being hideously rich. Here, at last, is someone who actually is keeping it very real indeed.

Rating: 8/10

Format: Album

Release Date: 25/05/09

Record Label: Autonomy Recordings Ltd

http://www.myspace.com/tripskingdom

First published on noizemakesenemies.co.uk on this link.