Merka’s new Hip Hop album project:

Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro - ‘In Heavy Weather’

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As featured on Ras Kwame’s 1Xtra podcast

‘the bastard child of Jazz Not Jazz, broken beat and Co Flow’ – Hip Hop Connection

‘In Heavy Weather is simply excellent’ – Out Of Hand

‘Mark ‘Merka’ Ford switches name and style...Swapping body-moving breakbeats for head-nodding hip-hop..’ - DJ Mag (4 stars)


FINALLY, Mystic Man, aka Merka, releases his long-awaited Hip-Hop project, ‘In Heavy Weather’. His debut album released last year, ‘Beserka’, raised the bar for Breaks producers everywhere and this year, he teams up with MC Esha forming Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro to create a slice of retrospective, cutting edge, beat driven hip hop. As shown in ‘Beserka’, Mark’s style of producing is to saturate his music with as many musical styles and genres as possible, and he carries this concept through to ‘In Heavy Weather’.

The album opens with ‘Cheshire Cat’, the debut single released at the end of last year, presenting its upbeat 90s jazz piano riffs, a rubbery bassline, and silky strings and backing vocals.

The next single to be released is the more melancholic ‘Minds I’, which evokes a certain sadness by Eshamanjaro’s bitter politics, the soft male vocals and the reverberant instrumental solo melodies.

‘Beserka’ was cited as ‘...one of the most interesting and captivating albums the scene has ever produced...’ by IDJ Magazine, and you can be sure that ‘In Heavy Weather’ will be the same. Influences are pulled from funk-fuelled jazz, the drum & bass feel of Photek, The Avalanches and even Lemon Jelly, and we get an explosion of bouncing beats, and funky guitars and basslines, with a quality of production that makes you think that the duo have been in the hip hop scene for years. With Merka tipped by Music Week as a producer who is ‘truly light years ahead’, and Esha’s thought-provoking lyrical skills, ‘In Heavy Weather’ takes UK Hip-Hop to a whole new level.