IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS - Open The Gates

First of all, we're dealing with a band capable of becoming transcendent and trans-historical. What does that essentially mean? It means that Irreversible Entanglements are able to engage with musical and cultural forms and figures, both traditional and innovative, that have run through the history not only of musics of African descent but also of avant-garde music, making different temporalities coexist simultaneously. The feeling is unmistakable when you hear the band live today – we can't know the future... – which is the natural setting where this album truly comes alive (as at the recent Le Guess Who? festival). This writer isn't looking for oracles, prophets, or enlightened figures, but the music of "Open The Gates" expresses, in an original and profound way, an incredible expressive and artistic power, captured in a single day of recording.

The gates open with the title track, perhaps the most "obvious" piece on the tracklist, letting the iconoclastic energy of Moor Mother's ensemble flow freely — unlike the anger and urgency of the two previous albums, it channels itself right away into a series of compositions that, after so much deconstruction, forge a work that settles into the ground like a rock. "Who Sent You?" (International Anthem/Don Giovanni, 2020) already contained the summa of the band's roots and poetics, including the influence of Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman.

The exploration turns toward "The blueprint of creation/ a possible history" ("Key Of Creation"), over a dub foundation above which the muted trumpet traces melodies out of the pre-electric Miles Davis of "In A Silent Way" (Columbia, 1969), before suddenly turning into a variation à la Minutemen, with the bass running in the footsteps of Mike Watt. "Lágrimas Del Mar" has unison horns in a free jazz style that plays in Chicago territory, cracked open by no wave digressions ("Storm Came Twice"):

Blues as religion

Sundown blues

Shooting star blues

Blues explosion

(…)

Blackness as religion

In an instant we find ourselves inside a work of sound art ("Water Meditation"), amid distant tolling cowbells and the clear, narrative melodic line of a trumpet chasing a theme by Ennio Morricone, before encountering fragments of bells and rhythmic figures of Caribbean descent disrupted by the sporadic thunder of the synth, which captures and absorbs the spirit of the track in its central section, recalling the interferences of Kid A" (Emi, 2000) by Radiohead.

Echoes of "Science Fiction" (Columbia, 1972) by Ornette Coleman and "Brown Rice" (Emi, 1975) by Don Cherry refract throughout. So many and so varied are the trajectories mapped out in these compositions – among them the enigmatic, restless "Six Sounds" – that it's up to each listener to venture in and discover the unexpected, under the steady guidance of a phenomenal rhythm section – Tcheser Holmes (drums and percussion) and Luke Stewart (double bass and electric bass) – capable of anything, and above all able to set free the visionary fantasies of Aquiles Navarro (trumpet, synth), of Keir Neuringer (saxophone, synth), and the spoken-word poetry of Camae Ayewa, as measured as it is essential in every word. "Billie, Nina, Sarah, Betty, Abbey" – their cry and their lineage are invoked, in unison with the female archetypes of "Your Queen Is A Reptile" by Sons of Kemet (Impulse!, 2018).

We find ourselves in the same galaxy as the Exploding Star Orchestra of Rob Mazurek, albeit with different aims: there, the phantasmagoria and the pursuit of a perfect form of synesthesia as a synthesis of the arts, along the path of the Historical Avant-Gardes; here, transcendence from reality in order to find oneself deeply united at the origin, living simultaneously through communion, trauma and diaspora:

So beautiful I cried on the lotus

I kissed the foot of the djembe

I cried in joy

I cried in laughter

I cried in my father’s tongue

'Cause I'm so close

Because we are so close, to the good news

I cried in Panama

I cried in Kingston

I cried in Mississippi

I cried and cried some more

‘Cause we are so close

So close

"The Port Remembers" closes with a fanfare of decadent, decayed symphonism, giving shape to the historical nightmare of peoples of African descent, a nightmare to be retraced and from which to free oneself through catharsis:

The port remembers

The slow walk into the void

Washing away the blood

"Open The Gates" is a far more complex work than it might seem on first listens. It dissolves, coils around itself, slips away, unravels, imagines, shifts tempo but never direction. It's not hype, trust me. It's trance.

It's something more than healing

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

06/12/2021