[music] SAUL WILLIAMS - Saul Williams (Fader Label)

[dot_fennel]

First of all, SAUL FUCKING WILLIAMS. I didn't know this was coming out until Monday, and now I have it. That's a treat.

Williams said in an interview that he was trying to write 'songs' this time rather than setting poetry to music. In a few places this is blatantly not what happened, such as the album's overture "Talk To Strangers", a poem read calmly over iffy ambient music. The rest of the tracks are more clearly conceived of as songs, but not always structured that way, as Williams builds pressure over the course of the whole track instead of letting everything out in the chorus.

The standouts are next to each other in the middle of the record, and about as different as possible. "African Student Movement" calls back to the verbal style of Williams' classic manifesto "Coded Language", whose climax was (just) a list of names read with increasing urgency. Okay, list poems can be lazy. This one is not; the simplicity of the unexplained juxtapositions tie it together exactly as it needs, as do the slow dancehall beat and Williams' murmured repetition of "tell me where my niggas at". Right after it comes "Black Stacey", songlike and autobiographical.

I keep expecting Williams to sound like he did on "Twice The First Time" (RealAudio link to, frustratingly, only the first half of the song). That isn't where he's headed; "Twice" talked about removing the urban element from hip-hop, and it did, but that isn't Williams's whole mission.

Like Tricky and Mos Def, Saul Williams sees the idea of rap-rock as something worth saving from the mob of goons that have it now. His idiosyncratic self-production makes a better case for it than Tricky's, I think. (Haven't heard any of Mos Def's experiments in that vein, just read that he tried.) There's power in that brutal guitar screech. Still, I prefer his even stranger effects, like the Radiohead woob-woob noise in "African Student Movement".

Anyway, I like this record. Can't tell yet how much.

If you want to hear the least typical track, Matthew Perpetua has blogged "Grippo" over at FluxBlog.

Comments

[chillguru.livejournal.com]

i didn't know that mos def was also experimenting with a less 'conventional' sound
this is something i'd totally be willing to check out
as he is a most amazing lyricist and i love his vocal style

did you hear about the dave chappelle sponsored block party?
it sounded like a pretty sweet show all said and done

#8^D~

[dot_fennel]

Dude! Earlier today I was like, "Chuck said something about having a livejournal. I should find out what it is."

Yeah, apparently Mos Def drafted the guitarist from Bad Brains and the drummer from Living Color to start a rap-rock band called Black Jack Johnson. I just heard about this the other day and haven't really found anything about them on the net except for their name-- they may not be active.

That Dave Chappelle thing does sound cool. I spent most of last Saturday night hiding from loud noises, though, so I guess it's good I wasn't there.