Pax & Pry
"For people loving jazz and soul and hiphop with that boombap vibe and coming down to the essence lyrically, it’s Pax and Pry." Pax.
It’s not easy to have a normal conversation with Pax and Pry. Or at least stay on one topic. During the couple of hours we spend together ostensibly discussing their album A Day at the Office the conversation veers from Turkey’s entry into the EU to the Schuurman sisters, to going bald, to organising musical workshops in Africa. But then nothing’s really typical about this pair. On the one hand you’ve got Pax, whose parents were hippies and who, according to Pry, could have been the best drummer in the Netherlands had he not given them up to concentrate on the mic. On the other there’s Pry, the guitarist/bassist who used to live in a squat and now lives (legally) in an old asylum seeker centre in a forest. And without getting too Captain Planet on your arses, when their powers combine, they create music good enough to save the world.
In October they made their debut album A Day at the Office available as a free download on their website. It might have sneaked under the radar in all the fuss surrounding Radiohead when they did the same thing, but their motives were slightly more humble than the English dirgemonsters’, as Pax discloses:
"We feel we’re still developing, so we think we should be way more productive than your average act. If you look at Prince, he brings out a new album every three months or so. Of course you can’t always have quality at that rate, but when you have quantity, you’ll have quality sooner. We had a quick look around, but didn’t get any answers we liked, so we decided to drop our album and start finishing the next one, which is almost done. By the time that’s out, we’ll be halfway to the one after that. That’s how we want to keep on going. The bottom line is that we want to make people happy."
This burning desire for self-improvement and growth is also found in their decision to stop playing live until they’re happier with the standard of their performances. This’ll come as a surprise to anyone who saw their show at Utreg Centraal, when they tore the house down. But that wasn’t good enough for Pax.
"We’re not satisfied yet. We want to put on an extraordinary show. The concept now is that Pry takes the guitar and bass parts out of the songs and plays them live. That’s ok, but I want it to be fabulous, like the feeling you have when you watch someone like Kyteman. I mean people were crying when he was on stage. That’s what I want to reach. I know we have a different kind of music, but that’s fine, I don’t want to have everybody crying, I want to get everybody jumping."
If they’re hard on their live show, then what they make of their album, I don’t know. They probably won’t say it, but it’s excellent. If you haven’t got it yet, then download it here now. It takes you through a day in their lives, blasting off with A Day at the Office, which boasts that ‘Pax and Pry will get the job done’ over a bouncing organ line and scratching from fellow Utrecht alumnus Kypski, before culminating in the epic lullaby Sleep. By the time you get there, you’ve run an emotional and sonic gauntlet, taking in the single Recognize (the most upbeat track on the album driven by an irresistible guitar line), Wanna Know, one of the tracks on which Pax gets to show off his skills behind the drums, and Bless You, led by another funky guitar line from Pry. But it’s not these tracks, which Pax and Pry really want to talk about. Instead it’s the darker, deeper tracks, like B(ack) Again which dominate the conversation. As with all of his lyrics, it’s drawn from Pax’s own experiences.
"Yeah, that’s a heavy one, a bitter track. It’s reflecting on a lot of years of struggle with no result involving a certain girl, called B (hence the name of the track), who I very much love."
But don’t make the mistake of thinking that all Pax and Pry’s tracks are that straightforward. Even Recognize, which always send the crowd mad when it’s dropped in a club, is lyrically dark and discusses how friendships drift and change. It’s the opposite with May March. Because of the forlorn trumpet line and off-key arrangement, I venture that it’s one of the sadder tracks on the album, which takes Pax back a bit.
"Well, it was positive when we wrote it! Maybe when you listen to the lyrics more, you’ll hear that (laughs). For me it’s got a man on mission vibe to it. But maybe the blues have got so far into me that even when I make a happy song, it sounds sad. We always have some sort of message though. I never go anywhere just to get drunk, I can’t do that. I tend to hit the cipher or have a deep conversation with someone, and that’s the way our songs go too."
This is most evident in True And You Know It, one of the first beats that Pry ever made. While it’s notable simply for the ingenious use of whistling as the hook, the eerie guitar line and murky drums provide the backdrop for Pax to spit what he says are his favourite lyrics on the album. For Pry, it’s their manifesto.
"Lyrically that song is what we’re about. Nowadays it’s about all the commercial stuff, MTV Cribs and all that shit. With us, there’s no glamour, it’s all about the music. It explains the difference between what people see and what they’re supposed to listen to. There’s a big difference."
And that’s the difference with Pax and Pry. While every two-bit rapper will constantly drop phrases like being true to the game and repping their hood, these two really mean it and really do it. They love Utrecht and want to establish it as the Dutch centre for creative hip hop. So they’re part of the driving force behind Utreg Centraal, the annual showpiece for Utrecht’s talent, where the genuine bond between all of the artists was clearly evident. Pax believes this is unique in Holland.
"We’re the only town who can do that. That’s mainly because we’ve got a pretty strong hippy mentality, we just want to make new shit and appreciate other people’s shit. We want to get together, hook up and get stronger."
It’s this spirit of collaboration which has led to the creation of www.habek.nu , a site which is a focal point for anyone who shares this philosophy and a love of hip hop.
"It’s already gone further than Utrecht, but Utrecht is still the base. I think it’s the origin of the mentality that’s it time for togetherness in this shit. It’s easy to unite things that make money. It’s harder to unite things that have quality. I have faith in humanity, so I believe that assembling quality will eventually compete with stuff that’s sellable."
The plans for Habek are ambitious – more events and workshops and a mobile shop to go around nights selling LPs from all the Habek artists. With the local council and government potentially interested in supporting the movement, it looks like people are already beginning to recognise the talent and potential that U-Town has.
Pax, along with his partner in crime Lord R, is handling Habek’s business side.
"I get phone calls every day from organisations asking for workshops, we’re in talks with the local council, we have to-do lists which go on forever, but we don’t have the money or the time to do it."
These workshops show the other side of Pax and Pry’s love for their city, by trying to make a positive difference in their community. They organise workshops to promote hip hop culture, which Pax believes can be a powerful force in bringing people together and instilling the right values in the young communities:
"We do them at schools, cultural organisations who want to do stuff for Africa or for people who just want to implement hip hop into their thing. But I always check to see if they mean hip hop or urban music. Because over here we have this label ‘urban’ which includes any sort of very sorry-ass commercial crap which you don’t want your children to see, because you’ll program them to buy expensive clothes and jewellery and fuck as many chicks as they can. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but hip hop should be more than that. Hip hop’s all about emancipation, and kids need that nowadays. In our country racial and religious differences have kind of slowly exploded in the last 10 years. Hip hop is the one thing that unites and brings people together."
And it’s true. And you know it. As Pry says:
"Wherever I go in the world, whenever I see a hip hop head, we start talking about hip hop, even if we can’t talk the same language.’ We’ve all had the same experience with music, it transcends boundaries. And there’s nothing as global or potent as hip hop at the moment. My mum might disagree with the argument that hip hop can solve all the world’s problems, but I reckon that if you gave her half an hour with Pax and Pry (not like that) then she might be convinced. Pax and Pry represent all that’s good in hip hop – good tunes, fat beats, rhymes that are witty but always on point. We need more people like them. And if there’s more like them to be found in Utrecht, then we should all start harassing the local council for funding now.
photo: Roel D