Marxman: Straight Shooters
Marxman by Scarlet Paige
In the early ‘90s, as hip hop blazed new trails through Europe, a little-known Irish troupe put a new spin on the emerging form. Enter Marxman: socialist Irish republicans and renegade emcees.
“You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far…”
In 1994, when Biggie put those words to wax, there was cause for disbelief. A culture that sprung from the dilapidated boroughs of ‘70s New York — a rose that grew from concrete — had taken the nation by storm. A burgeoning white audience had turned rap’s reigning emcees into pop culture icons, and emcees, once paid in props and respect, were sipping Cristal and commuting in limousines. As a conquering culture sped headfirst into the excesses of the Shiny Suit Era, hip-hop was still finding its feet abroad.
In November 1982, the New York City Rap Tour reached Europe, with impresario Fab 5 Freddy taking a host of New York’s brightest talents — among them emcees Rammellzee and The Fantastic Four, DJs Afrika Bambataa and Grandmixer DXT, and graffito Phase 2 and Dondi — to France and England. A showcase of the then-new form, the tour attested to hip hop’s global potential, and throughout the 1980s, these disparate nations started cultivating their own hip hop scenes. By the time Public Enemy rocked London in 1987, hip hop had changed dramatically; by the turn of the new decade, British and French rap had marquee records of their own.
In turn of the decade Ireland, rock reigned supreme. U2 were a massive global export post-The Joshua Tree, and My Bloody Valentine — though less immediately successful — were breaking new and exciting ground with Loveless. In the underground, however, a hip hop scene was starting to emerge, spearheaded by groups like Scary Éire, who played raucous shows at Dublin’s Rock Garden and Barnstormers. At the same time, in the UK, an Irish-English outfit was taking this ascendent scene to the charts, juggling their unapologetic nationalist perspective with the push-and-pull of mainstream British culture. Marxman were straight shooters, offering a bold vision of British Isles rap informed by their cross-cultural heritage and searing socialist politics, laying a blueprint for a culture emerging.
The story opens, as it often does, in Bristol. In the early ‘90s, its vibrant music scene burst to the forefront of British music, and when Hollis Michael Byrne got involved in the late ‘80s, that movement was picking up speed. Hollis, born in Dublin, was moving with The Wild Bunch collective — from which Massive Attack would later emerge — and taking in the creative atmosphere of the scene. On a trip back to Dublin, Hollis linked up with his childhood friend, Oisin Lunny, and showed him Eric B & Rakim’s Paid in Full. “He knew all the samples — Donald Byrd, and the deep soul and jazz cuts — and I hadn’t got a clue about any of that stuff,” remembered Hollis in a recent interview. It wasn’t long before the pair headed to a local studio.
When Hollis met Stephen Brown, a fellow student and emcee, back in Bristol, he’d already recorded a handful of demos with Lunny in Dublin. Brown came into the fold and, as Phrase D, became Hollis’ emceeing counterpart; they were soon joined by Kurt, or DJ K One, and the four of them christened themselves Marxman. Lunny moved to London, finding a job at a recording studio in Fulham, and the quartet were soon laying their first demos as a complete outfit. They honed their craft and courted labels, even recording demos for Island Records at their famous studio, the Fallout Shelter, in Hammersmith. That deal, perhaps fortuitously, never came to be.
The group soon came to the notice of Talkin’ Loud, a record label founded in 1990 by radio host and hip hop champion Gilles Peterson. An outwardly socialist Irish-English rap group comprising two Dubliners and two British-Jamaicans, they promised firebrand rhymes, steeped in the history of their cause. While Marxman’s own political journey is rather mysterious, there is a long history of socialism in Irish Republicanism, epitomised by the work of pioneering socialist James Connelly, a WWI-era union organizer. Bobby Sands, a famous IRA martyr, was also a socialist. Connelly was executed by firing squad in 1916; Sands starved to death in prison during his high-profile hunger strike in 1981.
“Sad Affair,” a cavernous mix of traditional Irish instruments, thundering drums, and emphatic lyrics, put a fine point on England’s ongoing colonial project in Northern Ireland, referencing Connelly, the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, and the Birmingham Six. Hollis and Phrase D’s bars, speaking truth to power, were ‘inflammatory’ enough to warrant a ban on the BBC, who refused to play the single and accused it of being pro-IRA.
But England and her soldiers came, started centuries of shame
Raped our women stole our grain, called this land a different name
Killed the leaders, killed the young, put to the sword or gun or hung…”
The music video, directed by Sean O’Hagan and Seamus McGarvey, is similarly stark. It opens with a quote from Sir Alfred Sherman, adviser to Thatcher, taken from an interview in Pravda: “as for the lumpen, coloured people and Irish… the only way to hold them in check is to have enough well-armed police.” Their performance is shot in black and white, intercut with footage from The Troubles, violence and upheaval spliced with flames and mantras. WE WILL RISE AGAIN appears for a moment, before Hollis, covering his mouth, says “tiocfaidh ár lá.” That Irish Republican slogan, which translates to “our time will come,” is contentious today; in 1992, as The Troubles raged, it was taken as outright extremism.
This outspoken political debut might’ve made enemies of the BBC, but their radical politics and unmistakably Irish style endeared them to other artists. “Ships Ahoy,” the group’s second single, featured an appearance from a true Irish great: Sinead O’Connor. “We weren’t signed yet at the time,” recalled Hollis of that collaboration. “One day we were recording, and she just rocked up.” O’Connor had supposedly been riding in a car with music video directors O’Hagen and Garvey when she heard the demo, immediately agreeing to sing the chorus. “Unless you were close to her, you can’t really believe how powerful her voice was; it’s hard to believe that it came out of her, because she was so tiny and petite.”
O’Connor’s simple refrain — “Ship ahoy / Lord take me where I lie, don't let my children die” — anchors an ambitious seven-minute track that draws a line from the international slave trade to modern wage slavery. It’s a wordy blend of grim historical background, Marxian economic thought and free market skepticism laced atop a jaunty Irish instrumental, as strange then as it is now, but it still broke onto the UK Singles Chart. It was a modest showing for an unwieldy single, though it represented a new frontier for authentically Irish hip-hop: mainstream charts. The same week that “Ships Ahoy” arrived at 64, the infamous “Informer” was at number 5 — that smash hit, by Irish-Canadian emcee Snow, was perhaps its absolute inverse.
O’Connor’s contributions to the track went beyond the booth, appearing with and supporting the group in live performance. “She supported us all the way through; she played live with us at Town and Country and stuff like that, and she did the video with us, and we hung out a bit back then,” remembered Hollis. “She was just great.”
“All About Eve,” the third and final single from 33 Revolutions Per Minute, is a bassy dance-rap track about domestic violence. It reads as a hard sell but holds up as their most palatable single, the intricate telling anchored by a simple house beat and catchy refrain. It thrived on the UK Singles Chart, breaking into the top 30 and earning a live performance on Top of the Pops. Marxman performed rocking shirts emblazoned with SELF DEFENCE IS NO OFFENCE, flanked by their red star-and-gear insignia, to a crowd on their feet. They were, as far as I can tell, the first Irish hip hop group to perform on the show, and almost certainly the most outwardly socialist act to take to the longstanding stage.
Fascinatingly, “All About Eve” came complete with a music video from then-nascent director Spike Jonze, hot off his early collaborations with the Beastie Boys. “He was so lowkey,” remembered Lunny. “He was just so fluid and incredibly professional, but what he really wanted to talk about was the new Beastie Boys album.” It was Ill Communication, for which Jonze directed the classic Sabotage video. Hollis, for his part, remembers being “disrespectful to him” on the day: “we called him Shaggy Dog for the whole day,” he says, noting his resemblance to Shaggy of Scooby Doo fame. Jonze, for whatever reason, never asked to work with them again.
They might’ve alienated the BBC and Spike Jonze, but Marxman soon found new fans in the industry. “Drifting,” an album track off 33 Revolutions, was produced by DJ Premier and Guru of Gang Starr, and “Droppin’ Elocution” boasted a beat from Stimulated Dummies, the production team spearheaded by legendary A&R Dante Ross. The group toured across Europe as a support for Depeche Mode, then touring extensively in support of Songs of Faith and Devotion. “Their politico rap-dance goes down relatively well,” wrote one Time Out reviewer of the Madrid show, though it seems like not all were impressed: “one of the two Marxman gang-leaders nurses the side of his head backstage, someone having thrown a coin at him, and he’s looking deeply unhappy.” It was admittedly a strange bill, with fans of Depeche Mode watching Marxman, Dub Syndicate, and The Sisters of Mercy as they waited for their synth-rock headliners.
On 27 August 1993, Marxman communed with Irish legend: they supported U2 at Dublin’s RDS Arena. “Dónal [Lunny’s father] even came on stage to play bodhran on Sad Affair,” remembered Hollis in a recent interview. “That was, probably for me, one of my favourite memories, actually.” At the second show on August 28, U2 were supported by Scary Éire, a similarly pioneering Irish rap group. Marxman and Scary Éire later shared a bill in June 1994, when both local acts opened for Beastie Boys in Dublin.
Photos from Marxman’s tour diary, c. 1993. That’s DJ Premier resting his arm on Hollis in the Celtics jacket.
It was a whirlwind tour for the Marxman four, but in spite of their dizzying trip to Top of the Pops, 33 Revolutions Per Minute didn’t rise to label expectations. The record spent a single week at 69 on the Albums Chart and, once their live supports were done, the quartet split with Talkin’ Loud. They signed with More Rockers Records, a label founded by DJ Rob Smith. Smith had also been a part of the late-’80s Bristol scene, producing Massive Attack’s first single, “Any Love.” It was through More Rockers that Marxman released their second record, Time Capsule.
It’s not hard to feel the difference. “Dazed & Confused” opens the record with hard alt-rock guitars, an anthemic take on disillusion and defeat; “Time Capsule” doubles down on the dour, the bars practically snarled over the spacey beat. The immediate impression is fury, with lyrics bleak and delivery vicious. “Alienated and short fused,” the duo conjure images of death, cages, tragedies, and the apocalypse, plotting their escape from “a dream that turned into a nightmare.” It’s not hard to see this as a comment on their industry experience, with a later bar — “Ice-T, Time Warner” — referencing the Cop Killer controversy as a shorthand for the ills of the game.
Time Capsule is seen as an angry record, but fear also dominates. There’s a hopelessness at play, and at times it feels as though the emcees are backed into a corner, flinging impassioned truths at an ever-encroaching enemy. The album soon mellows, and the cutting edge comes mostly by way of words. “A House Called Serenity,” a boom-bap tale of suburban disillusion, introduces a relaxed band sound into the mix, and “A Day in the Life of…” continues the palette, with flourishes from trumpets and saxophones gracing both tracks. There’s some variety throughout — “Scenes In My Mind” is a dub joint; “Vermillion Shag,” an instrumental, lets the trumpet do the talking — but Time Capsule is less musically adventurous than its predecessor, with little in the way of 33 Revolutions’ distinctly Irish arrangements.
There’s no telling how Time Capsule did commercially, even for Marxman themselves. “To be honest, we had no idea how many copies of the second album we sold,” said Hollis last year. The group was losing momentum, and they went their separate ways soon after the release. “I think I’d had enough of touring, and I’d probably been doing gigs and stuff since I was 16 or 17, and I think I was just knackered,” he says, copping to the breakup. Lunny agrees: “it felt like it had reached a natural finish… it was the right thing.”
Marxman by Kevin Westenberg
In recent years, up-and-coming Irish hip hop artists like Kneecap have shone a spotlight on Marxman’s story. It seems unlikely that a group like Marxman — socialist, republican, unapologetically so — would be mainstream trailblazers, but their modest success broke barriers for Irish emcees. It’s important to say that they weren’t alone: Scary Éire were blazing trails in the underground, but their record deal with Island broke down, and the group’s debut album was shelved. It finally released in 2007, by which time their cult legend was well-established, backed by rowdy live performances and a classic single.
In spite of their wider release, Marxman haven’t inspired the same fervour as their cult compatriots. One could argue that the group, so outwardly principled, were chewed up and spit out by the music industry machine, but the even-handed retrospection of Hollis and Lunny tells a more measured story. Marxman came, saw, and conquered, even if just for a moment, taking Irish hip hop further than anyone would’ve thought. It calls to mind Biggie’s incredulity, first uttered during Marxman’s tour, but also conjures another famous quote: “everyone, Republican or otherwise, has his own particular part to play.” In fusing Irish nationalism, militant socialism, anti-racism, and a little Marxist feminism, Marxman played their part at 33 revolutions per minute, taking the fight to a new front — where it still rages today.