Sun Araw & M. Geddes Gengras Meet The Congos – FRKWYS Vol. 9: Icon Give Thank (RVNG Intl. Records)
The pairing of younger musicians with more seasoned counterparts can be a tricky proposition. Though these may be well-intentioned attempts to bridge generational and cultural divides, they often come off as an older artist’s attempt to leech credibility off of a younger musician or a younger musician’s attempt to gain timelessness by proxy – or worse yet, both. The FRKWYS series curated by RVNG Intl. Records (who apparently hate vowels as much as they love collaborations) has been a notable exception, in previous volumes pairing up recent experimental artists like Julianna Barwick and Excepter with seasoned veterans like Ikue Mori and Jim Thirwell. At first glance, the series’ most recent volume might seem the least likely to work, teaming the abstract exotica of Sun Araw, the electronic psychedelia of M. Geddas Gengras, and the roots reggae of the Congos (whose 1977 album Heart Of The Congos is one of the best records ever to come out of Jamaica).
Sun Araw & M. Geddes Gengras Meet The Congos – FRKWYS Vol. 9: Icon Give Thank (RVNG Intl. Records)
The pairing of younger musicians with more seasoned counterparts can be a tricky proposition. Though these may be well-intentioned attempts to bridge generational and cultural divides, they often come off as an older artist’s attempt to leech credibility off of a younger musician or a younger musician’s attempt to gain timelessness by proxy – or worse yet, both. The FRKWYS series curated by RVNG Intl. Records (who apparently hate vowels as much as they love collaborations) has been a notable exception, in previous volumes pairing up recent experimental artists like Julianna Barwick and Excepter with seasoned veterans like Ikue Mori and Jim Thirwell. At first glance, the series’ most recent volume might seem the least likely to work, teaming the abstract exotica of Sun Araw, the electronic psychedelia of M. Geddas Gengras, and the roots reggae of the Congos (whose 1977 album Heart Of The Congos is one of the best records ever to come out of Jamaica). But what could easily turn into a forced superimposition of vastly disparate styles actually works, with none of the artists taking a hard line in their aesthetic approach and all of them meeting at a point that’s almost surprising in its centrality between their respective sensibilities.
Opener “New Binghi,” a brief bit of shimmering abstract synth patterns and spoken vocals expounding upon Rasta spirituality, might not provide the clearest picture of the album as a totality. But the following songs attain a consistency that underscores the creative focus of all involved. “Happy Song” sets the template, gliding by on juxtapositions of the familiar and the alien, with traditional nyabinghi drums dancing around rough electronic percussion, sharp guitar flourishes that accent ethereal synth patterns, and a mantra-like repeated vocal melody atop it all. Subtle variations from its repetition provide a steady, if slowly unfolding, direction to the song’s interlocking sonic web. Several subsequent pieces follow this lead, each one an aggregate of minute elements that become a whole larger than their respective parts. They turn tiny sonic fragments into immersive soundworlds, their dense tonal clusters engaged in an elaborate dance with serpentine polyrhythms that are minimalist in their direction, but not in their scope.
The final two songs present the most striking variations from the already unconventional pattern. It’s as if the collaborative process took the album’s course to become fully established, with each song slightly more assured than its predecessor, and the contributors able to conclude the album with some of its more sharply divergent material. “Invocation,” a piece of Rasta gospel featuring harmonized vocals underpinned by subtle hand drums, begins with a sparseness not seen elsewhere on the album, which gradually becomes more immured in electronic treatments as the song progresses. This slow build in turn gives way to the closer “Thanks and Praise,” easily the strongest piece present. In it, everything that characterized the album is scaled back into something more subtle and textural than its more rhythmically assertive predecessors – the percussion and keyboards are more sparse, the vocal harmonies more subdued and pensive, the guitar a meandering acoustic strum – without seeming reductive.
While the music itself is impressive, what the album represents is equally worthy of consideration. The number of attempts made to utilize art as a means to bridge different cultures and to bring together the traditional and the progressive have rendered either idea almost cliched at this point. Therefore, an album such as this that achieves both is doubly important. Unlike so many such experiments, it doesn’t come across as forced. It neither comes off like some sort of musical colonialism, where the hip American musicians use Jamaican elements as a means to show off their worldliness, nor does it seem like any contributing party is concerned with using the other to attain credibility. The album rewards no cynicism and recognizes none of the artificial boundaries that preoccupy so many artists. It comes across as a self-contained artistic entity, beholden to such disparate influences that it lays outside their respective purviews and, without seeming contrived, serves as a testament to music’s ability to act as a common demoninator between people.
