Epic Rain

Epic Rain is one DJ and two MCs. DJ plays interesting, jazzy, not very hiphoppy music reminding one Kurt Weill and Berling cabarets, adding beats and smart scratching into it. One MC raps smartly rhymed, literate lyrics, the other sings with full, rough, almost crooning voice. And he is dressed and made up like a cabaret clown. Their tracks are romantic, even melancholly, but never too far from funny. Their performance is theatrical, they engage the audience, their music swings (or “waltzes”, actually). Epic Rain played two gigs at Eurosonic. I saw the one in Groningen Museum, new, modern art gallery on one of the canals. This extraordinary environment (carpeted floors, canvases on the walls, uniformed gallery guards) reinforced the theatre quality of Epic Rain’s fresh and joyful performance. Epic Rain was my biggest surprise at Eurosonic Noorderslag 2013. - Reykjavik Revisited

We keep repeating: Icelandic music is much more than Björk, Sigur Rós and chatting about geysers and elves. One of the surprises at Eurosonic was such Epic Rain, a trio that combines hip hop beats with sandpaper waltzes, alternately reminiscent of Tom Waits and cabaret in the Weimar Republic. The DJ juggled with old blues, country and folk pictures, the singer was disguised as a soap bubble blowing Pierrot and the rapper, of Lebanese descent, was there, as Ghostpoet, a downtempo flow after his cinematic stories straight to your heart chased.

The theatrical show of the men, also with glitter confetti and playing cards in the round were scattered, did a little unpolished, but it proved that with few resources and good ideas can accomplish a lot. And with his EP 'Murder of Crows' and cd 'Elegy' Epic Rain already proves to be great. - Knack Focus

Epic Rain - we knew they wouldn't disappoint. Fusing hip-hop, Tom Waits-esque crankiness, Cypress Hill dissonance, twisted waltzy beats and ... well, a spot of rather good crooning, we've featured these chaps and their excellent new release, 'Elegy', before and with good reason. - IMX

Epic Rain - we knew they wouldn't disappoint. Fusing hip-hop, Tom Waits-esque crankiness, Cypress Hill dissonance, twisted waltzy beats and ... well, a spot of rather good crooning, we've featured these chaps and their excellent new release, 'Elegy', before and with good reason. - IMX

Epic Rain: Now these guys were interesting. Kind of hip hop infused with New Orleans jazz. They had a DJ who was both mixing the beats and scratching, plus two MCs. We picked up their CD, and we understand one of the DJs from KEXP radio did as well, so there’s a good chance we’ll hear this on the radio in Seattle at some point. - seattle hockey

But I must save one last paragraph for the Icelandic trio Epic Rain. The name smells of prog-metal or post-rock guitar symphony. You get neither. Epic Rain are three hip-hoppers that sounded like one thing when I heard their new album, Elegy (self released), in a Reykajavík store, Lucky Records, prompted by the propriet0r. The writing and singing was Tom Waits, Dr. Dre and the Weimar Republic in a blender: German between-the-wars cabaret with jeep-bass thump and rhyming in a junkyard-dog croon. It was all that live too, except the group members showed up like standard b-boys, playing this stuff straight on stage. They looked like nothing special, pulling off something much more than that, which I didn't even know existed until I got here.



- David Fricke Rolling Stone

it's hip-hop cabaret, led by the flow of a rapper as Buck 65 , brightened by songs in a rugged style to Tom Waits .The music awakens our senses with sounds and visuals applied. - Froggy's Delight

Top discovery of Transmusicales 2011
The amazing world of Epic Rain - Les Champs Libres

What is the first group you signed up for this edition?

Jean-Louis Brossard:
Epic Rain. I spotted at the festival Island Airways last November and I kept far below the elbow without talking (laughs). It is a Lebanese singer based in Reykjavik (Iceland), very impressive. It is a kind of Nick Cave hip-hop, - culturebox

Epic Rain is accompanied by a sidekick magician disguised as Pierrot The Moon and ensuring parts sung choruses. A light years away from lyrics of "bitch" Epic Rain tells stories dreamlike tales in the form of a Nordic presence and flow crazy amazing. His movements give an extra touch of class and a few accessories like a mouthpiece make the originality of the set.
Pierrot fun even with a deck of cards that will be thrown into the crowd, the 8 of clubs landing in my hair. The two frontmen are very vocal and rap down tempo. Productions performed by an D.J. at the back are quite folk, repeating loops of calm weather that was used to hearing from Sigur Rós. But this gentleman has forged a style all his own, like geysers and volcanoes were growing in the middle of the Bronx. Epic Win. - sound of violence

You can find everything at the Trans, even a mime. So it was with Epic Rain. This Icelander of Lebanese origin, who evidently does like to combine things. Like an existentialist poet he recites his lyrics to dark beats that shape the moods: sad carnival, rain, music box ... The artist is on stage with a DJ, and another intriguing presence with whom he shared the microphone: a mime with a bowler hat and a smile he might have swiped from the Joker in Batman. He wanders on stage, with playing cards or glitter in his hands, to strew on the public. With his air of a storyteller in a cabaret, Epic Rain leads his small disquieting theater like a ringmaster of a freak show, with graceful gestures, but no uncertain flow. - france info

Icelandic Epic Rain has proposed a set pretty amazing. For it is ultimately an exercise near the slam and poetry that has engaged the company of three artists could be described as follows: a storyteller, a sad clown and a beatmaker for environments between abstract hip hop and cabaret melancholy. Punctuating his verses in a gesture of a magician, Epic Rain unravels the thread of deceptive appearances, and we would love to read his texts with a clear head to understand the subtleties.
- discordance

A Lebanese rapper that grew up in Iceland. Summary of these elements of identity, Epic Rain remains enigmatic. Yet essential to understanding his music. Car fumes nebulae in the country of volcanoes seem to have permanently covered his world. His hip-hop intimate with a broken voice shouted to Tom Waits as Buck 65, or just a lighter tone, there is a folk rock or dark twilight. Delightfully disturbing. - ouest france

I am not sure that many people are familiar with the name Epic Rain. For my part it was quite simply one of the top discoveries of this festival. On one hand a granular flow, guttural, tormented, with the syllables thrown in the face of the public like sharpened shurikens, all delivered with a phenomenal charisma. On the other hand a clown with magnificent eyes, an ample and masterful voice, astonishingly lyrical, which would be more at home in a folk indie group. However, these two voices, so diametrically opposed, work in harmony. All of this is orchestrated by a DJ who, just as in an adventure with countless twists, sends these two prodigies towards a folk perfused with beat, or a whorehouse cabaret orchestration in the style of Tom Waits or into heavy electronic sonorities. And the only reproach? The concept, closer to a show than a live performance where freestyle has its place, runs out of breath towards the end of the set: the apotheosis that we wait for so expectantly gives room to a sort of weariness. But it is only a question of time before the cinematographic performance of Epic Rain finds its echo in public. Watch out for him.
- Ricard S.A. live music blog