World's End FM

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Recorded with longtime collaborator Karma Kid over two days at Abbey Road Studios, fans can now also watch the creation of “Windrush Baby” as part of the legendary Abbey Road ‘Lock-In’ series.

It’s not afraid to get dark, but there’s humour too – on record, as on the stage, Hak Baker is irrepressible. Most poignantly, the crowd’s response to old-school anthem ‘Conundrum’ completely overwhelms him, sparking an infectious, beaming smile that stretches across his face. I wanna slow down a bit, enjoy the sun and go to my country that has been left in tatters from foreign politics,” he says.The Show is the apotheosis of Horan’s classic rock sound, which he has been carefully honing ever since his solo debut, 2017’s Flicker. I know what’s going on, I see what’s going on and I document it, and I talk about it in the most visceral, honest, human way. His debut album, World’s End FM , takes a chunk of Jamie T and Pete(r) Doherty’s cheeky chappy schtick and combines it with a thick glaze of scruffy pop sheen, resulting in a collection of songs that, while inoffensive enough, fails to truly tap into the spirit of the decade’s best offerings.

The self-proclaimed “three island man” — given that he has a Jamaican mother, a Grenadian father and hails from the Isle of Dogs in London — has an instantly recognisable voice: a thick cockney accent laced with the odd splash of Jamaican patois which was a key facet of his 2017 debut EP ‘Misfits’ and his 2020 mixtape ‘Babylon’, over instrumentals which blended acoustic folk guitar with elements of sunny reggae, punk and ska.

God only knows where this could go,” Niall Horan wonders on “Heaven”, the lead single from his third and best album. Despite the apocalyptic gloom of ‘World’s End FM’, it’s an album overflowing with love, spirit and unity. In the process, Baker bursts through reggae, indie, and post-punk, weaving in snippets of phone-ins from friends and family, which tackle subjects as serious as digital obsession, mental health, and suicide. What I’ve developed throughout my time of writing music is a channel, a pathway where I stop thinking when it comes to making music and my subconscious opens out,” he says. After playing recent single ‘Windrush Baby’, he necks his bottle of beer and is quickly handed a new one.

Featuring a voice note from his mother about the “loss of values” within British Black youth whilst addressing Hak, the song is a powerful ode to lost souls and the real motherland; Jamaica. Worlds End FM is a debut album that introduces Hak Baker’s singular, mercurial folk-poetry in the manner of a molotov cocktail being ‘introduced’ to a window. I think people get confused and they don’t really know where to put me,” says Hak, who remembers being nicknamed ‘Cockney’ by fellow black inmates in prison because of the supposedly confusing way he spoke. Hak debuted “Conundrum” in 2017 on Later…With Jools Holland as an “unsigned” new artist, going against the grain and proof that Hak is a storyteller as much as he is a poet and singer. They] still dig up the earth, still pollute the sky, even though they have the ability to do otherwise: it’s insanity.As a whole, World’s End FM feels nostalgic (for fans of Jamie T, Just Jack, Bloc Party, and The Streets), but given a fresh polish and shine. A true statement of his capabilities, ‘World’s End FM’ is styled as a kind of alternative universe pirate radio broadcast. East End troubadour Hak Baker announces his highly-anticipated debut album, W orlds End FM, an extraordinary creative leap tailor-made for an era of social inequity, internet addiction and post-pandemic disillusionment, to be released on 9 June 2023 on Hak Attack Records, AWAL. Because [gentrification] came in such an influx, now what’s there are strangers in our land who refuse to delve into anything that was there before them.