North West England artist  today shares his new single ‘Northside Needs Me’, the second preview of his forthcoming debut album ‘Saints In The Wethouse’, out November 13th via XL Recordings.

Following early primer ‘Consumer’, the icy industrial-rap coda ‘Northside Needs Me’ critiques the misnomers around the Northern experimental scene. It’s a diatribe of the artists and imitators that seek to co-opt the aesthetic and regional characteristics without honouring the lived reality of the people.

“I was like ‘everyone’s dancing now, everybody’s making harsh noise music, and everyone wants to be from up north’,” he says. “I don’t feel like that at all anymore, but at the time I was like ‘everyone’s copying me.’”

References to violence ground the single in real issues around his community, through “the madness that’s been going on over the last 15 years” since the 2011 riots in his former home of Salford. This plays out in the Mao Morgó-directed music video, depicting Blackhaine being beaten up by the police as a young boy looks on.

Blackhaine’s debut LP ‘Saints In The Wethouse’ – which comes four years after his EP ‘Armour II’ – is a visceral embodiment of his auteur rap noise sound and status: a 12-track crusade of hardcore songs about a deserted man seeking salvation through exhaustion.

Mainly realised in studio by Blackhaine, and reinforced by executive producer Wraith9 (EsDeeKid, Fakemink), it features a tight-knit crew of North West day-ones — Rainy Miller, Croww, Space Afrika — with additional chops by Ship Sket, Vanessa Bedoret, and Gabe Evans giving heft to the raw hyperrealist-fiction.