Photo Credit: Nathan Rose
Birmingham’s Tony Bontana breathes music. At fourteen he was touring Europe with his hardcore band Curbstomp (SCBD) and as he’s grown so has his output. Since leaving the band to focus on his own work, music has poured out – we’ve had punk projects, hip hop projects, drum n bass projects, lo-fi beat tapes, and production credits for many including the Based God himself.
In 2019 he founded his own label – ‘Everything is Perfect Records’ with affiliates Sink600 and oghost. Tony uses independence to its full potential, a space of freedom and experimentation.
On ‘Payday’ we hear Tony developing what has become a signature sound – ‘alternative hip hop’ would be the closest descriptor but it doesn’t do justice to its diversity. Familiar styles are chopped and flipped, we hear Mobb Deep in the depressive piano samples, Earl Sweatshirt in the catatonic delivery, Flying Lotus in the jazz drums, Death Grips in the punk hardness that lurks beneath many of the tracks.
Tony is a master-curator but carves his own space in the sonic landscape, playing with persona and structure, form and flow. Authenticity is a theme throughout – “Fake it til I make it but I’m never faking”, Tony spits on the tape’s opener.
Character is used as a device to explore emotion and internal conflict. On the cinematic, Divine Council-esque, ‘Brew’, pop-culture references are mashed up to create a crime lord alter-ego,
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“I know some guys to take your life/so you better play it nice… I was born in the 80s/the CIA saved me/she sucked me in the morning while I’m watching Pushing Daisies”
The humour of the track makes for an unsettling juxtaposition against the recurring themes of anxiety and self-loathing, “overload on calories/I eat too much/any day it’s gonna damage me”.
On ‘Bitterness’, Tony explores this further. He confronts the vulnerability that comes with honesty, the difficulty of maintaining integrity in the face of comparison with others and commercial success, “Try to monetise my pain/put it on a pretty page”.
But with the fragility, comes a wit and self-knowledge that makes us have faith that Tony will be able to keep it real as his success inevitably grows. “All I do is cry on tunes”… “n***** hating cos they girl be like why aren’t you crying too?”.
A true one off.
