Trash Talk, Ratking, Lee Bannon

Trash Talk is an American hardcore punk band hailing from Sacramento, California, formed in 2005. Trash Talk combines modern hardcore and thrash with the aggression of its descendants, creating a sound that is at once exciting, unrelenting and entirely fresh.

Much is often made of the relationship between artist and place. A common consideration for sure, yet it seems foolish to appraise any artist without considering the effect of his location on everything from his unique worldview to his understanding and use of the various elements that make up his musical vision.

Consider then what it means to make music in the following landscape: a city famed for its fearlessness and endeavor, struck by despair and shuttered. A city in which delicate, perfumed beauty sits aside rancid, mangled poverty. A city wide eyed and weary, at all times both monument and bulldozer, remaining itself through constant "de" and "re"construction.

That city is New York and the band is RATKING. Wiki, Hak and Sporting Life. While many of their peers seem too content to inhabit the safety of mimicry and pastiche, RATKING's music is best understood as neither reenactment nor recreation, but reaction.

To what, one might ask?

Well, a clip from any one of their frenetic live shows provides an immediate answer: you hear the fallout of a bloated and self satisfied hip hop, the nihilist refrain of dead end punk and the prickly reach for connection that befits their noise and experimental influences. Left with the various remaining bits of all these traditions and the bum-rush scramble of modern
life, RATKING are creating a new reality in every moment, just like every other inhabitant of New York City. While Sporting Life weaves a teeming Big Apple backdrop, Wiki and Hak act not only as our mischievous tour guides but dual ends of our own conscious: one sharp witted, vulnerable and seemingly anti-social, the other feral, poetic and almost philosophical. Call it 'no wave' rap. Call it 'no school' hip hop. Call it RATKING.

Lee Bannon is an experimental hip-hop producer from Sacramento, California. His work has spread along the vast hip hop scene, having produced Joey Bada$$, Ab-Soul, Souls of Mischief and others. In addition, Bannon has evolved his sound into traces of trance, jungle, and deep house music and establishing himself as one of the few producers able to navigate across all soundscapes.

After a series of collaborations and releases he delivered the Fantastic Plastic album in 2012 and earlier that year premiered his Caligula Theme Music with Spin Magazine. Bannon toured with Joey Bada$$ in 2012 and appeared on Jimmy Fallonalongside The Roots performing Joey's hit single "Waves". He produced the B side to that single titled "Enter The Void" with Ab-Soul. In addition to the Bada$$/ Lil B diss track "Don't Quit Your Day Job", he also produced a few songs on the Pro era compilation Peep the The aPROcalypse and had a heavy presence on Joey's follow up project Summer Knights.

In February 2013, he released a free 10-track project and follow-up to his Caligula Theme Music EP titled Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5 and a few months later, the calmer free EP Never/mind/the/darkness/of/it…Later that summer, the hard core jungle-influenced track "NW/WB" took the internet by storm and listed him on Spin Magazine's top 5 artist to watch that month. Freshly signed to legendary UK label Ninjatune, Bannon is ready to share his official debut album at the end of 2013.