Who knew that the best rap album of the year would have more in common with Miles Davis than with Kanye West? And make no mistake, the birth and formative influences of Black Up come from those jazz greats of the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Any connection to a current artist would be tangetial at best. The aura of mystery surrounding Shabazz Palaces further proves that even in an age of digital opaqueness, an artist may still use anonymity to seperate their music from themselves, especially in the case of artists known from other bands who want to place their current work outside of the context of their past releases. Such is the case with Ishmael Butler, part of rap group Digable Planets. Shabazz Palaces exists to exorcise those ideas and the creative restlessness which could never be resolved with his input in that band. The jazzy, fractured beats spread across these tracks are so far beyond what Digable Planets have released that it seems strange to imagine this particular aspect of Butler never having made itself known in that band. So much the worse for them, so much the better for us.
Black Up is not what you'd call a radio friendly album. In fact, it feels so prickly and unapproachable on first listen that it's hard to see just who the audience would be for this record. The dense beats and scatter-shot rhythms march over stop-start vocals which draw you in while also making you feel like an outsider, especially when these songs turn dark, which is often.
More so than most any other album this year, Black Up took the longest to click with me. I would put it on initially out of a sense of obligation, but the more I listened to it, the more I started going back to it for the sheer joy of discovery. There would always be something new heard in each consecutive spin. But these songs are dense and take time to yield to the listener, making them castaways to those who only want a superficial buzz and who feel that songs should come easy to the listener and not require time to give up their secrets. But those people are missing out on one of the most creative and diversely executed albums of the past 10 years. Opener "free press and curl" marches steadily on the strength of its stutter-stop drums and vibratory bassline; later in the track, the beat slows down to a crawl and Butler's vocals slither among the stilted beats like a predator. The song that closes the album, "Swerve…The reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)", wiggles its boom bap beat alongside the elastic vocals of Thee Stasia and Butler, while stretching and modulating what sounds like a harmonica. The song gradually unravels letting the album drift off into the static of the musical ether from which it was borne. By forcing us to reconsider the parameters by which we judge music, Shabazz Palaces harkens back to its influential jazz progeniters who recognized the need for musical experimentation and created whole new ideas of tonal structures. With that history as their backing, Shabazz Palaces continue that tradition of absolute creation on Black Up. But where the fuck do we go from here?
Tracklisting:
01. free press and curl
02. An echo from the hosts that process infinitum
03. Are you…Can you…Were you? (Felt)
04. A treatease dedicated to the Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)
05. Youlogy
06. Endeavors for Never (The last time we spoke you said you were not here. I saw you though.)
07. Recollections of the wraith
08. The King’s new clothes were made by his own hands
09. yeah you
10. Swerve…The reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding) (listen to the mp3 below)
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