THE BLACK PERIL
Award-winning saxophonist, composer, poet, MC and producer Soweto Kinch returns with a brand new studio album, The Black Peril, released on Soweto Kinch Recordings on November 18th.
A politically and racially-engaged body of work, historical inspiration for the record can be traced to the episodes of civil unrest that erupted across the western world one year on from the Armistice Declaration in 1919. What should have been a moment of triumph and social cohesion, disintegrated into violent disorder and racial conflict. From Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and South Shields, Jamaica and the ‘Red Summer’ across the US, city streets were set ablaze by race riots. The album is a reflection on this history as well as celebration of 100 years of ‘black music’ across the Diaspora.
Featuring a stellar line-up of musicians from across the UK jazz scene – including the likes of Jay Phelps, Giacomo Smith, Xhosa Cole and Nathanial Cross – plus US jazz stars Eric Lewis andGregory Hutchinson,The Black Peril explores the sounds of ragtime, proto-jazz, West Indian folk music and the classical works of black composers of the period, revisiting a time of momentous social change, while also exploring connecting strands to modern forms of dance music including hip-hop and trap. The music examines both the ebullience and defiant optimism of early black music, as well as the brooding sense of revolutionary danger it symbolised.
The project is a powerful artistic reflection on this 100-year history of racial conflict, exploring cultural anxieties, which in many ways are just as prescient in today’s world.
The Legend of Mike Smith
‘The Legend of Mike Smith’ is a double album epic from Soweto Kinch that tells the story of an aspiring rapper possessed by each of the seven deadly sins. Fusing jazz, hip-hop and spoken word narrative the album explores corporate sin, the temptations of capitalism and the travails of a young artist attempting to get signed. Featuring Kinch on saxophones, rap/spoken vocals and beat production it’s certainly his most ambitious recording project to date. With the trio of Soweto, Karl Rasheed Abel (bass) and Graham Godfrey (drums) at its core, the album also features notable collaborators including vocalists Eska Mtungwazi and Cleveland Watkiss, pianist Julian Joseph, saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and trumpeter Jay Phelps, alongside a cast of actors.
Drawing on influences as divergent as Dante, J.S. Bach, Ornette Coleman and Madlib, the album creates an alternative sonic universe to comment on this one and is a thrilling, cryptic and comedic listen from start to finish. As Soweto describes, “this concept really allowed me to push myself to stylistic extremes, light years outside of my comfort zone.”
Nonagram
‘Nonagram’
The album concept revolves around a nine-sided wheel or nonagon. Each musical point along the wheel explores a feature of different numbers or shapes. For instance the track exploring ‘3’ uses frequencies such as 60Hz and relates it to 180Hz (the internal and total angles of an equilateral triangle). Through shifting time signatures, harmony and tonality the music explores how sound can describe incorporeal ideas of mathematics, traveling through each point along a digital system: how music gives form to ideas that can’t be seen in the natural world; or how these fundamentals are expressed in nature or sacred geometry. Taking broad inspiration from bird song and cymatic patterns, to the Egyptian Ennead and Platonic shapes this album will feel like a journey through a hidden world of abstraction.
“In an age where words, science or religion are often used to divide people, I’m largely inspired by these numerical and sonic aspects of music that transcend cultural differences. Whilst writing the Legend of Mike Smith, I had innumerable conversations about ‘dark forces’ controlling the music industry and keeping the populace as sheeple. Part of the inspiration is in injecting a musical antidote that instead inspires us to see new visions of the surrounding world”
