Foggy Notions Presents the Irish Debut of XL Recordings CASISDEAD at The
Button Factory Dublin on Friday 8th March 2024.

CASISDEAD might not live in our world, but his music reflects its seedy
underbelly. His debut album Famous Last Words is a fully realised
expansion of the dystopian futurism that has captivated audiences since
he first announced himself in 2013. Over the past decade, he’s dipped in
and out of the shadows, blessing fans with cult hits while maintaining
his anonymity, shunning media attention and donning various masks; a
rejection of the spotlight that’s helped to create folklore around a
rapper who’s widely regarded as one of the UK’s most inventive
lyricists.

His highly anticipated LP Famous Last Words is as much a sci-fi film as
it is a rap record, a labyrinth of vice, crime and faded glamour,
soundtracked by synthpop production that wouldn’t be out of place on a
David Sylvian or Tears For Fears album. The listener steps through a
portal into a realm narrated by CAS, whose command of storytelling drops
you right into the underground of a city where he is the main character
in a shady network of gangsters, girls and drug deals. However, Famous
Last Words isn’t a story of bravado or posturing; much of the album
deals in themes of loss, regret and suspicion, a persona constantly
self-reflecting amongst the madness that surrounds him.

The album features a carefully and idiosyncratically curated roll call
of collaborators including Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant,  Connie
Constance, Kamio and Desire. The vocalists are immersed in CASISDEAD’s
hallmark 80’s-inspired soundscapes, aided and abetted by a production
cast that includes Stranger Things composer Kyle Dixon and producer,
composer and Italians Do It Better label founder Johnny Jewel.
Meanwhile, actors Ed Skrein and Emma Rigby’s narrative weaves through
the record, amplifying the widescreen, cinematic experience.

On “Actin’ Up ft. Desire”, arguably the record’s centrepiece, CAS tells
the story of being accosted in a hotel by an armed man after meeting a
woman on the way to do a deal on a car: “Here I go again I’m acting up /
always slippin nah this shit ain’t adding up / sidetracked by little bit
of sun / the first bit of skirt I see I’m in love”. The album’s closer
Skydive sees CAS ruminate on his past selves and the scars he still
wears today, while paying tribute to his late friend and creative
collaborator Mello: “When you’re young you’re immortal / time moves slow
/ I was in the moment, blinked and I was old / the years that I was
owed, stolen / as a result it made me cold”. “Skydive” features Neil
Tennant, who was a huge influence on CAS growing up in Tottenham. He
cites Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” as one of the song that got him
hooked on 80s music and he regularly references artists from the era in
his lyrics, such as on “Traction Control” - “blowin smoke listening to
Dave Bowie and Erasure / a n*gga baked just chopping cake with the
razor”.

The murky stories in Famous Last Words exist within the DEADCORP
universe, a sprawling, dark underworld ruled over by the DEADCORP
corporation. It’s both a corrupt and powerful organisation and a
parallel universe that CASISDEAD helps you access, an urban dystopia
that sounds and feels like London, but could be Gotham or the fictitious
2019 Los Angeles of Blade Runner. Spoken word interludes – sometimes
human, sometimes robot – run throughout Famous Last Words and hold the
record’s shady, paranoid narrative together. CAS channels Roy Batty’s
iconic monologue in Blade Runner on “Do You Remember What It Was Like”
when he whispers “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe”. The album is a
hooded figure stood in the rain at night, lit up only by the neon lights
of nearby shops and restaurants, a loner suffocated by the darkness of
DEADCORP.

While CASISDEAD might have been lauded by globally-renowned rappers such
as Skepta, Giggs, Dizzee and A$AP Rocky, he’s in a lane of his own. His
ability to world-build, create personas and channel the sleazy allure of
life in a big city bears as much similarity to an artist like Lana Del
Rey as it does his rap contemporaries. At the dawn of artificial
intelligence the world is at a turning point, on the verge of implosion.
Famous Last Words is the soundtrack to that – one last beautiful bad
dream.