Gonjasufi – MU.ZZ.LE

Label: Warp

White Picket Fence

Nikels and Dimes

The Blame

Sumach Ecks’ first album as Gonjasufi, A Sufi And A Killer, was a wild, unpredictable ride through broken Hip Hop landscapes, dominated by Ecks’ inimitable vocals. Sometimes screeching, sometimes soothing, his voice anchored these songs as they covered a wide range of musical styles, from lullaby to Trip Hop. But as is clear in the album title, the success of his debut was just as much down to production partner The Gaslamp Killer as it was Ecks’ utterly unique vocals and themes. Here on his second full-length Gonjasufi offers an album just as fascinating and just as difficult, but perhaps ultimately a little less rewarding.

Opener White Picket Fence establishes the album strongly, with all Gonjasufi’s trademark mood and instrumentation in place. A deep haze submerges all instrumentation, with a trippy groove supplied by an electric piano’s languid keys. Ecks’ lyrics, although often just as indistinguishable as on his debut, are once more elucidated by his wide range of vocal tones, making this release more emotional immediate than its predecessor. On second cut Feedin’ Birds Ecks’ wife supplies a soaring croon that compliments the sound perfectly, soothing at first but simmering with acidic rage just beneath the surface.

This shrouded threat of violence is continued as the second cut switches fluidly into a crackling drum
 loop at the start of Nikels and Dimes, an early highlight. The beats are contrasted with an oddly sweet melody which screeches and cries, and while the instrumentation reaches an uneasy equilibrium it is clearly grounded by some of Ecks’ clearest lyrics, discussing poverty and the role of privilege. The production across the LP is generally top notch, with minor details often accented the soundfield such as the muttered words towards the close of this track, which could be Ecks or a sample, melding fluidly with the creaky atmosphere which sits halfway between a lullaby and an agitated daydream.

Elsewhere Rubberband is an attractive mixture of drums that thump and crackle with a sluggish inevitability and Ecks’ trademark crooning, while Blaksuit sounds like a slowed-down Funk break taken offroad as his voice exalts the sounds of Mt Zion and echoes off into the nebulous ether. The tracks flow into each other or stop abruptly with the same attractive incoherence as on A Sufi And A Killer, creating unpredictable vibes that suit Ecks’ subject matter of inner conflict perfectly. Each tune here offers something different and worth exploring, but the brevity of the songs means there’s rarely enough time to actually getting into the sound before you’re essentially listening to something else.

Not only are the tracks short, but the album itself is incredibly slight, running just under 25 minutes with only a couple of songs pushing past three minutes. Ultimately this proves to be quite a disabling problem, because as a listener you don’t feel like there’s a whole lot to hold on to. Ecks’ lyrics, when audible, always provide interesting thoughts; ranging from his continued discussions of his violent thoughts and creation as destruction to conflicted references between his Sufist and Rastafarian leanings.  Similarly in musical terms there is a broad array of styles and instruments that seem to cohere in their incoherence, as if all the sounds wear the same weathered mask but are bound together by their dissonance and unpredictability. This would all be good if there were some fine grooves set up, with the music acting as an accessible base from which to tackle the more difficult questions of composition and lyrics. A Sufi and A Killer  was half composed of mad deviations and half of smoother Trip Hop grooves, and this meant that it could be listened to as an uneasy, conflicted whole or individual songs that could be played for their pure musicality. Here the latter isn’t really an option, MU.ZZ.LE suffers as an album for being so succinct and difficult, so while it’s always an interesting listen it’s rarely exciting in the conventional sense.

There is a lot to dive into here, but I think it’s telling that the two tracks here that exceed the three-minute mark are the two that feel like they are most wholly realised. The first is the aforementioned Nikels And Dimes and the second is late-album highlight The Blame, which could be seen as a culmination of Ecks’ mental torment. Here his lyrics are more lucid and audible than anywhere else on the album, as he lets loose on both contemporary society and himself (‘I know I’m not the perfect man / and I never claimed to be / I’ve done some things in my time / even i’m ashamed of me’). The song is a slow and dramatic testament to just how brilliant Gonjasufi can sound, but also highlights how frustratingly short and condensed a lot of the rest of the material on display is. By no means am I saying that Ecks should artificially lengthen his songs or albums to make them more digestible, but if your chosen format is music then making at least one element of your sound accessible is surely to be recommended.

So MU.ZZ.LE is by no means an easy album, but it still has a huge amount to offer. If you’re looking for a trippy and soulful background to a smoking session then this will stand up as a successor to A Sufi and A Killer, but you’d be missing a lot of what Ecks is really saying. The instrumentation, construction and lyrical content of this LP perfectly gets across the inner workings of a conflicted mind, yet the album too often comes across as demanding and wilfully difficult for it to be a truly great work. Gonjasufi continues to prove himself an utterly unique voice in today’s music scene, and I’m sure he will continue to walk a path entirely his own, but it would be nice to have a little more attention paid to the role of the listener on the next release.

7.5/10

Gonjasufi – A Sufi And A Killer

Kobwebz

Duet

I've Given

Sumach Ecks has been called 'spiritual' by more reviews and magazines than I'd care to count, and although the yoga instructor-cum-songwriter has a definite edge of the spiritual to his music, I found the hype around the release of the album focused more on his neo-psychadelic spirituality than on the actual quality of the music. And the reason that this is such a shame is that this LP, produced by the illustrious likes of Flying Lotus and The Gaslamp Killer, is a thrillingly versatile and accomplished debut by an artist who is genuinely unlike anything else out there at the moment.

Although the album has a normal runtime of an hour there are 20 tracks here and it feels like a lot of material, indeed it is a testament to the quality of the songwriting that many of the shorter one and two-minute tracks feel like fully rounded songs rather than the irritating interludes we see so frequently in 21^st century releases. However as a result of this the listener may be at first overwhelmed by the volume of different sounds and ideas coming across in the record, yet thankfully Ecks has circumvented this in two ways. The first is the hazy and trippy ambience instilled across the record, with dropped beats and psych-guitar reverbing all over the shop, lending the shorter tracks a needed coherence in the context of the whole. The second, and perhaps more notable achievement is his distinctive and distorted vocals which croak, howl and croon while veering wildly between clear and completely incomprehensible. Even with these assets, this album is not a particularly easy listen. Occasionally the transitions between tracks feels deliberately jarring, such as that between the melodic piano closing She Gone and the guttural roar which opens SuzieQ, and while the impression that there is a case of split personality to this records as it jolts around reinforces Ecks' central theme (showcased in the title) of the personal conflict between a peaceful yoga teacher and his violent past, the listener can feel more than a little alienated by the cacophony.

So its a good thing that this album is absolutely brimming with great tracks. Ecks certainly knows how to evoke trip-notic atmosphere in the likes of FlyLo produced third track Ancestors in which reverbed beats make it sound like a dusty offcut from the producer's stellar album Los Angeles, or in the exotic and snaking guitars of Kobwebz. He continues along the theme later in the album with highlights Change and Duet, the first a scratchy low-key soul number and the latter a bass-heavy piece with memorable vocal hooks and a game-changing sliding guitar soaring across the soundscape. As nice as these cuts are, the tracks that are a little different often prove to be even more spectacular. Sheep is a soothing ballad and Ecks' quietest moment, cut into gorgeously by a bollywood-esque female vocal sample that reaches a fever pitch before developing into a belting bluesy burst of lyrical schizophrenia, showcasing almost all of his best traits in a single track. Candylane is unashamed porn-soundtrack fare, and revels in this fact with Ecks' filthy vocals, while following track Holidays is a stripped beat with a building, clipped synth melody that is a breath of fresh electronic air after the crowded material in the rest of the release. Closer Made is a moody piece that seems crafted out of dust and melancholy horns, followed by a brilliant secret track that is all distortion and rock guitar. Meanwhile possibly my favourite track is penultimate cut I've Given which begins a gentle and faded guitar ballad before a minute in where the sound drops away, blending and building itself into a ferocious eastern-style synth melody that swirls blearingly around the listener with infectious energy before being superceded at the close by an electro-Hendrix solo. The transition is one of the not infrequent moments on the record where Ecks' true skill as a songwriter shines through as the songs seem to construct and deconstruct themselves beautifully without any outside influence.

It's not an easy listen both because of the distorted noise and the schizophrenic transitions, but there's an enormous amount of quality material across the record that outweighs the hype and backstory of its creator, making this a record that may at first be hard to like but after a few spins will certainly be easy to love.

8.5/10

Playlist #1 – Stoner Mix

Too often in music you come across artists who've made one excellent track and a bunch of less impressive stuff, or other tracks that are just more of the same, but worse.

So the other thing I'm gonna do this weekend besides remixes is give you a little playlist, of which I have quite a few planned – and this time I'm going for a chilled out groove; so there'll be Trip-Hop aplenty, with some electro, dub and reggae thrown in.

Not all of these artists only have one good song, some of them have great albums as well. But I figured people reading this probably already know most of the albums I review, so here's a little taster of some other stuff you may or may not wanna get your teeth into. 

So here you go:

Tracklist:

Tricky – Overcome

Classic trip hop, breathy track with a pulse.

Death In Vegas – Dirge

Some fine trip hop, a haunting female vocal overlaid with strong beats and a great build to the end.

Cut Chemist – The Garden

More of an electro track, still very chilled out from a skilled producer.

Fugees – How Many Mics

Laid back hip-hop from the 90s.

Gonjasufi – Change

Lush and trippy track with an echoey beat and Gonjasufi's distinctive vocals.

Wax Tailor – Que Sera

Great trip-hop with a fantastic sample (which you should recognise) from cool French producer.

///▲▲▲\\\ - Spit Shine

Lo-fi trippy witch house (it's pronounced 'Horse Macgyver', apparently)

King Midas Sound – Cool Out

Great track, quiet, chilled and dangerous from The Bug producer.

Alpha and Omega – Who Is the Ruler

Great dub, was included and remastered by Diplo in a recent mix.

Massive Attack – Karmacoma

You might recognise bits of this, Tricky (the first artist in the list) sings and writes the vocals, lyrics which he used again in his track Overcome. Either way, two very different and very good takes on the same lyrics.

Deadboy – Brock Lee Riddim

(Unfortunately I can't find this track on youtube, but here is a link to it on Spotify)

Really nice dubby track, a little less laid back but a great reggae sample.