Pitchforks & Torches

The sophomore Strange Famous Records release from Canada's legendary indie rap warrior LEE REED is here! A dozen dark designs for the darkest of times, over beats by ripple-eh-hex and cuts from !Kryme Won. Featuring his SFR brother OldBoy Rhymes on "ELXN SZN"! Words from Lee on the creation of the album: Pitchforks & Torches was written in 2022-2023, as the Covid crisis morphed into a cost of living crisis. The basics - rent, food, water, medicine, heating, cooling, etc. – became difficult or impossible to afford. Friends and neighbours were facing eviction. Friends and family were being laid off, or having their hours cut. Inflation and food prices soared. Parks became encampments for the unhoused; people froze or sweltered depending on the season. The streets filled with people in distress and trauma, with nowhere to go. Extreme weather became the norm - record temperatures, record storms, record fires, record floods, record drought, record rains - the stats kept going up. And all the while, the rich racked up historic gains, accumulating more wealth and property; bombs continued to be shipped and dropped across the globe; police budgets swelled and the militarization of police forces continued unchecked; the manufactured left vs. right culture war raged on every channel and platform; and politicians continued to feed us the same tired bullshit that got us here, sliding us into the maw of full blown fascism. Pitchforks and Torches was written to this dystopian backdrop. The album is dark and unsettling, like the world we live in; a raw, angry and visceral reaction to the times. Where most of my music could be seen as political commentary or critique, Pitchforks & Torches is expressly confrontational. Belligerent even. 34 minutes of pure, concentrated class war; with heavy lyrical bricks lobbed at cops, bosses, landlords, bankers, billionaires and the electoral sham that keeps this whole death dance in step. Dirty, scuffed, lo-fi beats from the big homie ripple-eh-hex. Cuts and arrangements by my fam !Kryme Won. And just one lone feature, from my Strange Famous brother OldBoy Rhymes. The soundscape hits as raw as the lyrical content. The darkest of music for the darkest of times.