Seth Sentry is an Australian hip hop and rap artist with an interesting history and trajectory. The narrative he details through is work, should you take it regardless of embellishment, is that after schooling, he worked in the service industry for ten some odd years before risking his assets to endeavor in hip hop. He released his first EP Waiter Minute, in 2008, which well received, allowed him to continue into his debut album This Was Tomorrow in 2012. After a fair hiatus, he released Strange New Past in 2015 with an acknowledgment to his aging, and a drastic shift in style; he has only released a few singles in the time since. One of my chief praises of Seth is with regard to his focus, a vast majority of his pieces detail critical opinions on society, happiness, and relationships, which are matters of sublime interest, that he handles delicately and with erudite analysis. This Was Tomorrow, arguably his most juvenile material, still maintains more legitimately interesting philosophy than many other more serious albums from other artists. Seth adds a great deal of humor to his interpretations of the world that ensure that his work accessible while still maintaining its depth. Where Was You (When The Dead Come Walkin’)? details a post apocalyptic situation from the position of a blue collar worker, where zombies break into the work facility, and he has to shirk his day job in favor of survival. Seth uses irony in contrasting the two ways of life to supreme humor, but manages to retain undertones that are critical of the blue collar lifestyle which many average members of modern day society inhabit. Secondarily, Seth’s talent for imagery is supreme, exemplified in his description of the room inhabited by the characters in Ten Paces, a recollection of a decaying relationship, the kind that fizzles rather than imitates the Hindenburg, where a slow atrophy and separation seem unavoidable but wherein the two stay together. He describes room where the two, in states relatively not awake or asleep, where every move is calculated, and where sad thoughts fill the air like birthday balloons, a description that wonderfully pairs irony with the potent melancholy that envelops the scene. His mockery of the doublespeak nature of our modernity is even more developed in Strange New Past, where he dedicates the entirety of Hate Love to the complex double edged nature of relationships. From pessimism to hope to confusion, the song works itself in circles, mirroring a frequent internal debate of people concerned with the abstract sense of love. While his newer material is incredible, his first EP has a distinct purpose in its risk, as he was independent at the time of its release. He wrote most of it while he was still working a full time job which places that context to it. Strange Lot is a about exactly that work, and monotony, and foremost its associated depression. Strange Lot is an absolute heartbreak, and has lent me strength when I most deeply needed it. Seth’s and Jane Bunn’s vocals are both complimented by simple instrumental backing, which lend them a calmness and space in which to perform. The simple drum loop and backing strings make the most beautiful backdrop for the hook, and Seth plays off of that energy with some of the saddest and most beautiful poetry I’ve heard. The words drip down from the mix, and festering the cracks of the floor find their way downward with a fitting anguish such that by the end of the piece there is a tsunami of emotional torrent that follows the piece. He describes day after day of torment and apathy in the face of his waking life, putting into words the most difficult, deepest sense of depression, the song is one of the most emotionally raw I’ve ever encountered.

TL;DR Seth’s Strange Lot is haunting, and riveting, and depressing, please give it it’s due time. Then, if you’re interested, progress to his newer work; he retains his sense of self in the face of exploration, it’s refreshing.

-A