- I was magnetically drawn to Walyalup / Fremantle hip hoppers SUPEREGO when they released their 2020 EP, Nautilus. An intense cocktail of musical experimentation, outraged conscious themes and fire, just fire. Their music often sounds like it’s on the verge of self-destruction and it makes a body wonder how the crew’s full-length debut might not do just that. Like a block party in a condemned building, about to collapse, it's an experience both thrilling and terrifying; genuinely hair-raising. Who Are You Hiding From? It might be you, SUPEREGO.

Super energetic opener Chrome Face is more than a bit Outkast? Although don't expect to find much here that's as chirpy as that. There’s so much of that energy, it could all burn out and tumble into dust at any minute - and that’s what it’s all about: the urge to turn away from the punishment, lay down your guns, abandon idealism. Take a breath though and relax a little, there’s lush neo-soul to follow. Covihaunt is like a conscious love song. That special kind of consciousness you need to get through spending a very long time in close quarters with your partner. It turns hilarious when Blunderland finishes it up by repeating all the song's sweet sentiments in a tearing scream. Yep, my therapist said it's important to say how you're feeling.

Dpopin (that’s Dead People On Plastic Notes) ropes in the very able talents of Mali Jo$e for what’s just about a classic brag-rap. It’s uncommonly lacking in sarcasm for the SUPEREGO crew, but sure isn’t short on aggression; and how! Mali’s great with stanzas like “Dead people on plastic notes / Might just solve your answers / Dead thoughts over plastic beats / is the only thing you’re having” finishing beautifully on “Mufucker yeah I’ll split your cabbage!” I might have to hand the trophy to Duke though, with his speeding triplet couplets and the equally brutal “Forgot the key to this lock / Can't be got with the rot secreted /  Needlessly, bleeded feces / Full of please believe mes / My bulimic teachings hold the meaning to success / Coming from your block before I knocked it off your neck”!

 Follow provides a welcome contrast and Blunderland really earns his pay, singing his own alto chorus and rapping out the verses, sounding quite a lot like Madlib; kind of blew me away. This is SUPEREGO so it’s all about mental anguish and a relationship reaching a moment of crisis, but at the same time the soulful trap is surprisingly moving, beautiful even. “My love / Follow that ocean way / Water will wash away / My love / Let's throw it all away / Out to the ocean babe”.

Pow! brings back that feeling of energy turned up so high that it’s about to flame out. HS Oldy is an all too honest account of trying to survive as a performer (or more likely a performer with one or two other jobs as well). Braggadocio is flipped on its head where lines such as “Stay playing like / Drums / Vegas / Races / Famous / Ageless / Evading cases / Raising status / Clout and paper Chasers” are less classic hip hop fodder and more like a plea for salvation. See especially: “I just wanna win…” sung in a whisper and just drenched with desperation. 

Recent single Lies is a duet for Blunderland to get his Timberlake on with guest Sakidasumi. Not that nearly anybody’s relationship did well in the last few years, but I’m thinking that the SUPEREGO crew have been through some very rocky terrain. How about that chorus? Just “Lies / Lies / Lies / Lies” over a vulpine, saw-wave synth - that’s the money in the bag, right there. Proving how easy it is to have the same argument over and over again in a relationship, the very soulful Naked Religion has Rhys Hussey and another guest, Pookie, asking if it’s all worth it and having a fight to find out; is soul music the payoff for bad relationships? Maybe.

The nature of identity got a lot of airtime on SUPEREGO’s 2020 EP and, I mean, those themes are definitely here again: how to define yourself in the face of a hostile world and, sometimes, a hostile self. They’re a bit more in the background this time though, so Pygmy Fowl Swansong feels like a bit of a trip back in time with its overtly tortured self-analysis and it just about pushes those relationship woes off the table. Allegories about computer-generated fake self and the increasingly mutilated and horrifying sounding bird, that one in the title -really, seriously failing to take flight- make for a tortuous journey.

…which isn’t over. The album’s title-track smashes in with a deranged mixture of beautiful acoustic guitar, driving hand claps, droning synth and shrieking sax. I guess you can’t have a good relationship if you can’t rest peacefully with yourself and so SUPEREGO rip the bandaid off the themes that dominated their last record. “Who are you fooling / Who are you hiding from / Have you forgotten / Who we are?” At nearly five minutes it’s the longest track here and the pain is palpable every single second. Yet, strangely, the raw passion makes this mouthful of broken-glass emotions utterly compelling. 

Life is repetition and You Don’t Even Know delivers the same romantic woes as a fever dream of the most deranged soul of the whole bunch. A verse’s episode of lucidity recalls the same couple at a happier time before we crash back into insanity.

It’s big finish time and Yung Freud delivers. The overt psychoanalytic concepts which framed much of SUPEREGO’s earlier work and, y’know, their name, after brief flirtations and threats, claw their way back in full, with a just about literal return to the womb. Oral stages, anal stages, vomiting and crapping everywhere: the SUPEREGO search at the fundamental psychological source for some answers, please, to every disaster that’s befallen them thus far. It’s grotesquely entertaining as the innocent id wrecks everything: “Baby smash ya average pacifier / Fire spitting / Shitting / Burping, pissing, ass squirting / BABY…” That’s a wholly different 'baby' than just about all the rest of pop music.

I’ll say it again, my god, this record is as terrifying as it is thrilling. It reminds me of some of my favourite bits of Young Fathers and, again, Outkast, or as other folks have noted: Brockhampton, JPEGMafia and Shabazz Palaces. It’s very much it’s own beast though. SUPEREGO are so focussed on finding their truth AT. ALL. COSTS. how could it not be? For all that the soul-shredding is still relentless, Who Are You Hiding From? feels more mature than their previous work, less forced. It folds in some more traditional genre standards, kind of like joists to hold everything up and then just hopes like hell that it does as SUPEREGO smash the joint. Bloody hell, this is so ridiculously iconoclastic, I’d be extremely surprised if SUPEREGO was the future of hip hop, but they really bloody should be.

- Chris Cobcroft.