PRESS FOR BRAM E. GIEBEN aka TEXTURE
"Delivers relentlessly nihilistic verses set in
a bleak dystopian future over heavy, synth-laden production."
Noisey
"A true poet."
Darren Loki McGarvey, Orwell Prize winner 2018
"Proper."
Ales Kot, comics and screenwriter, on #BURN
"A bleak, arresting, blackly funny listen."
THE SCOTS MAGAZINE on ELEVATE
"Intellectually dense in its post-nuclear apocalyptic narrative... Fearsomely gripping...
Offering the best in raw rap talent and production within the Scottish hip-hop underground scene,
this is most certainly a supremely special, thought-provoking album."
Louderthanwar on ELEVATE
Hip hop for metalheads… So masterfully portrayed it almost feels like you’re reading
an Alasdair Gray novel rather than listening to a rap record…
Burns with an intense inner light.
New Hellfire Club on ELEVATE
Older press:
"A very different kind of state of the nation address... skilled and eloquent...
tapping into the sense of powerlessness and fatalism which many feel increasingly faced with in life."
David Pollock, The Scotsman, **** review of EXNIHILO
"Bram is too skilled a writer and performer to let the audience off the hook with a bright and
cheery spoken word show... eloquently presenting interesting and though provoking ideas
to an attentive and engaged audience."
TV Bomb, **** review of EXNIHILO
"Bram is a fucking giant."
- Jim Monaghan, Poet, Govanhill Baths Community Trust
"Filthy wordsmith legend... Bram is the gaffer."
- Louie, Hector Bizerk
"His flow consists of multi-syllabic rhymes, alliteration and a scholarly vocabulary
that will appeal to hip hop fans of higher intellect.
The beats are heavily driven by the ambient sound-scapes rather than bass-heavy beats and
the vocals are mixed a bit low... so you are forced to really listen to the sophisticated subject matter.
Paints a picture the Orwellian modern world that we live in, one of constant surveillance,
the police state and the looming threats of financial collapse."
- Mr Manic, Mishka NYC, review of INCVBATE
"Texture's anti-corporate stance and gifted vocabulary doesn’t always
make it easy listening, but then it never was supposed to be...
An astonishing look at what spoken word can become in future,
if aided by confidence, electronics, and a direction."
- Stephen Watt, live review for Mumblewords
"Drips with despair and nihilism...
Bram’s definitely telling the situation as it is happening right now.
If we haven’t already fallen into the abyss, then it´s gonna happen soon. Very soon."
Bob Cluness, Reykjavik Sex Farm, on #BURN
"A remarkably, coherently, angry piece of art, a blazingly savage attempt to encompass the width of devastation
wrought on mental, social and economic landscapes over the last generation by forces
that refuse to acknowledge protest or criticism... Incredibly haunting, incredibly cutting, incredibly intense."
RS Thomason on #BURN
"Epically on-point, atmospheric dystopian gloom."
The Dan Prism on #BURN
"Likeably spiky."
- The Scotsman
"Brilliant."
- The Book Cafe, Radio Scotland (re. Chemical Poets)
“One of the most inventive pieces of British hip-hop that I've heard in a long long time.”
- Mary Ann Hobbes, Radio 1 Experimental (re. track 'Complacency' by Double Helix)
"Ginsberg's famous line 'whole intellects disgorged in total recall' springs to mind
when you hear these literary outsiders in full flow...
You quickly find yourself absorbed in the collision of reflexive word-play and information-age angst,
drawn in by their complex verbal rhythms and emphatic chants.
Channelling the fractured energy of 'Generation Y'... exceptionally inventive."
- Three Weeks [re. Chemical Poets Fringe show Twenty Tentacle - * * * *]
"Tortuously deep flows."
- The Creative Uncommons
"A dark urban feel combining aspects of hip-hop, dubstep and post-modern electronica...
Foreboding but hypnotically attractive... A good bet for the nihilists in the crowd."
- Free Albums Galore
"Delivers relentlessly nihilistic verses set in
a bleak dystopian future over heavy, synth-laden production."
Noisey
"A true poet."
Darren Loki McGarvey, Orwell Prize winner 2018
"Proper."
Ales Kot, comics and screenwriter, on #BURN
"A bleak, arresting, blackly funny listen."
THE SCOTS MAGAZINE on ELEVATE
"Intellectually dense in its post-nuclear apocalyptic narrative... Fearsomely gripping...
Offering the best in raw rap talent and production within the Scottish hip-hop underground scene,
this is most certainly a supremely special, thought-provoking album."
Louderthanwar on ELEVATE
Hip hop for metalheads… So masterfully portrayed it almost feels like you’re reading
an Alasdair Gray novel rather than listening to a rap record…
Burns with an intense inner light.
New Hellfire Club on ELEVATE
Older press:
"A very different kind of state of the nation address... skilled and eloquent...
tapping into the sense of powerlessness and fatalism which many feel increasingly faced with in life."
David Pollock, The Scotsman, **** review of EXNIHILO
"Bram is too skilled a writer and performer to let the audience off the hook with a bright and
cheery spoken word show... eloquently presenting interesting and though provoking ideas
to an attentive and engaged audience."
TV Bomb, **** review of EXNIHILO
"Bram is a fucking giant."
- Jim Monaghan, Poet, Govanhill Baths Community Trust
"Filthy wordsmith legend... Bram is the gaffer."
- Louie, Hector Bizerk
"His flow consists of multi-syllabic rhymes, alliteration and a scholarly vocabulary
that will appeal to hip hop fans of higher intellect.
The beats are heavily driven by the ambient sound-scapes rather than bass-heavy beats and
the vocals are mixed a bit low... so you are forced to really listen to the sophisticated subject matter.
Paints a picture the Orwellian modern world that we live in, one of constant surveillance,
the police state and the looming threats of financial collapse."
- Mr Manic, Mishka NYC, review of INCVBATE
"Texture's anti-corporate stance and gifted vocabulary doesn’t always
make it easy listening, but then it never was supposed to be...
An astonishing look at what spoken word can become in future,
if aided by confidence, electronics, and a direction."
- Stephen Watt, live review for Mumblewords
"Drips with despair and nihilism...
Bram’s definitely telling the situation as it is happening right now.
If we haven’t already fallen into the abyss, then it´s gonna happen soon. Very soon."
Bob Cluness, Reykjavik Sex Farm, on #BURN
"A remarkably, coherently, angry piece of art, a blazingly savage attempt to encompass the width of devastation
wrought on mental, social and economic landscapes over the last generation by forces
that refuse to acknowledge protest or criticism... Incredibly haunting, incredibly cutting, incredibly intense."
RS Thomason on #BURN
"Epically on-point, atmospheric dystopian gloom."
The Dan Prism on #BURN
"Likeably spiky."
- The Scotsman
"Brilliant."
- The Book Cafe, Radio Scotland (re. Chemical Poets)
“One of the most inventive pieces of British hip-hop that I've heard in a long long time.”
- Mary Ann Hobbes, Radio 1 Experimental (re. track 'Complacency' by Double Helix)
"Ginsberg's famous line 'whole intellects disgorged in total recall' springs to mind
when you hear these literary outsiders in full flow...
You quickly find yourself absorbed in the collision of reflexive word-play and information-age angst,
drawn in by their complex verbal rhythms and emphatic chants.
Channelling the fractured energy of 'Generation Y'... exceptionally inventive."
- Three Weeks [re. Chemical Poets Fringe show Twenty Tentacle - * * * *]
"Tortuously deep flows."
- The Creative Uncommons
"A dark urban feel combining aspects of hip-hop, dubstep and post-modern electronica...
Foreboding but hypnotically attractive... A good bet for the nihilists in the crowd."
- Free Albums Galore
