Scrufizzer and producer Utters met Dr Al Connell for the organ lowdown. He settled on the larynx after a conversation about speed rapping and how our voicebox works; Al showed him a video of the larynx in action. As an artist who relies on the speed and agility of his own voice when rapping, Scru was keen to investigate the complexity of how sound is produced, and how words are shaped and pitch controlled. The musicians met Prof. Martin Birchall at the Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) Hospital, University College London Hospital, who filmed Scru’s larynx and was amazed by Scru’s vocal chords. He described the incredible agility of the larynx and its anatomy (you can’t swallow while you’re talking or breathing and you can’t breathe while you’re swallowing)… which Scru took as the central theme of the track “Play, Pause and Rewind”.

Utters sat in on a session with the Larynxless Choir, organised by (ENT) Dr Thomas Moors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. The choir was set up to help people who have had a laryngectomy. Singing exercises the throat muscles and improves their control and range.  After 6 weeks the vocal range, volume, speech intelligibility and quality of life can really improve, along with confidence given that their voice doesn’t sound so strange after the regular singing workout.

ABOUT THE SONG

Scru was taken with Prof Martin’s praise for his larynx, and the song is a celebration of this. It’s not quite literal – the chorus uses a simple metaphor of a tape machine, and how it’s clunky when you’re pressing lots of different buttons, and it goes mad if you try to press two buttons at the same time…The larynx itself (the helium voice) butts in bragging about how much more nimble he is – typical of an MC…. Utters’ production was inspired in part by the “Talk Box”, a musical device in many of the great records of the 1970s and 1980s.

HEAR MORE FROM PRODUCER UTTERS VIA SOUNDCLOUD

HEAR MORE FROM SCRUFIZZER VIA SOUNDCLOUD