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Sault, an English dance-music collective built around producer Dean "Inflo" Cover,
bridged psychedelic soul of the 1960s, disco-music of the 1970s and house music of the 1990s on their albums
5 (2019),
a cerebral kaleidoscope of hip-hop infected neosoul
that contains Up All Night,
Masterpiece,
collaborations with Anderson .Paak
(Something's In The Air) and
Erykah Badu (Think About It and B.A.B.E.)
7 (2019), the only album with singing on every song (and with mostly political lyrics),
the 20-song Black Is (2020), a concept on the struggles of black people in the USA influenced by Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye as well as, again
Erykah Badu (with Stop Dem, Sorry Ain't Enough, Monsters),
and Rise (2020), a much more musical realization of the same
political mission
through the single Free, the tribal The Beginning and the End,
and a bunch of militant agit-prop ballads
(Street Fighter, No Black Violins in London, The Black and the Gold, Faceless Angel, Fearless).
Best is how they reimagine neosoul in the six-minute Strong.
All their albums contain a lot of fillers and should have been just EPs (or just one full-length).
A lot of filler also bogs down
Nine (2021), a concept on London's gang culture. Highlights include
the clownish funky London Gangs,
the subhuman hip-hop of Fear,
the soul-jazz ballad Bitter Streets,
and especially the choral singalong 9.
Filler includes You from London with Little Simz and
the gloomy spoken-word narrative Mike's Story.
Air (2022)
is completely different, an incursion into lush symphonic and (wordless) operatic music.
The choir mostly utters vowels which sound like counterpoints to the staccatos of strings and horns.
Songs don't have a dominant melody but undercurrents of melodies or loops of melodic snippets.
It is relatively easy to assemble the Wagner-ian overture Reality and the
Dvorak-ian vignette June 55. More impressive is actually the
nostalgic, retro'
Air, a tribute to Hollywood-ian orchestrations of the 1950s.
The twelve-minute Solar boasts the most dynamic changes and fares well as
a symphonic poem of the post-Michael Nyman era.
A gospel choir briefly sneaks through the wall of sound of Time is Precious.
The problem is that this music lacks emotional power.
The album got an appendix in the five-song AIIR.
Having abandoned neo-soul balladry in favor of neoclassic orchestra and choir,
at the end of 2022 Sault released
four albums overflowing with filler:
11, that time-travels back to the 1970s for
the funk-soul singalong Together and
the somnolent soul litany River;
Earth, that embraces African rhythms in the
eight-minute pagan dance
The Lord's With Me a` la Fleetwood Mac's Tusk
and African chanting in God Is In Control for female choir;
Today & Tomorrow, highlighted by two
singalongs sung by a children's choir, namely
Above the Sky and the oddly
Black Sabbath-esque The Jungle;
and the 21-song Untitled (God), the most inconsistent but with the
Afro-disco-pop ballad Free and the
Motown-esque ditty Just Want to Dance.
Strong from Untitled is a confused tribute to the 1970s, but
Stronger from Earth is the melodrama-oriented ballad of the era.
(Copyright © 2021 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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