Halfway through Robert Mugge’s 1980 documentary Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, the avant-garde musician describes a place that is “beyond what you know as time, where the gods of mythology dwell. They dwell in their mythocracy, a magic world that makes things to be. These gods can offer you immortality.” Sun Ra’s mystical words provide a place of spiritual reprieve – a tempting world that opposes theocracies, democracies, monocracies, and other “ocracies” (as Mr. Ra likes to call them). In other words, there is room for hope, even if we have to reach across the cosmos to grasp it. Almost half a century later, poet-mastermind Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, and noise-metal group SUMAC have made a harsh realization: no more can we buy into the compelling words of wisdom from the legendary cosmic-exploring jazzman. Space is no longer the place. Hope is lost and our dreams are shattered.
This staggering collaboration may have seemed unexpected, but in retrospect it feels inevitable. SUMAC – consisting of Aaron Turner, Brian Cook, and Nick Yacyshyn – have consistently pushed metal into uncharted realms, frequently teaming up with noise legends such as Keiji Haino, ENDON and Kevin Drumm to create explosively distorted, almost jazz-like arrangements. Meanwhile, Moor Mother’s talent knows no bounds – her collaborations span across countless genres, constantly redefining musical conventions. She’s worked with hip-hop experimentalists Armand Hammer and Pink Siifu, folk veterans Lonnie Holly and Arooj Aftab, jazz acts Irreversible Entanglements and Nicole Mitchell, and metal groups such as The Body and Hirs Collective. It was only a matter of time and space until these two trailblazing forces collided to create The Film, an hour-long exploration of post-Afrofuturistic noise-metal that demands to be experienced in one sitting.
The Film is overflowing with dismal reflections. Setting the stage is “Scene 1”, where Ayewa speaks of those “at Walmart buying guns just to believe again in a lie that was never true” while clamoring guitars, wailing like sirens, angrily forewarn the hopelessness to come. “We don’t believe” she repeats until her outraged spoken words eventually crash into a wall of distortion that seeks to drown them out. Immediately, the existence of our supposed freedoms is challenged. What follows is “The Run”, a 12-minute arrangement portraying a fleeting memory of anguish and vexation. After several minutes of panicked noise and rumbling guitar that resembles a slow moving train, Ayewa hysterically recounts an attempted escape “from shadows of uncertainty”. Chaos reigns at around the eight minute mark as a tumultuous alarm of sound bursts forth from Turner’s guitar, signaling SUMAC’s return to a more familiar form. Turner’s harsh vocals are introduced, one of the few moments they take center stage, and slowly turn into a desperate and vulnerable screech. Uncertainty is all that remains.
“Scene 3” and “Scene 4” mark the onset of a harrowing epiphany. “There will be blood in the way of our dreams” Ayewa realizes at the beginning of the introspective and almost anthemic “Scene 3”. Across its seven minutes, three chords are repeated while Ayewa raps about isolation and the atomic destruction of our own memories. In “Scene 4”, things are devastatingly clear. The walls have closed in; we’ve already tried running and there is no escape. “Nobody told me how peace was supposed to be” Ayewa proclaims dryly, her words floating through a tense and unforgiving atmosphere.
Then comes “Camera”, an attempt to realize how we ended up in this hopeless wasteland. The track begins with a parody of distorted guitars mocking a robotic voice, trying to explain its operations, before Ayewa addresses the ceaseless, voyeuristic nature of our society: “Come closer to the light / maybe they will see us, believe us / we lay out our dead / let the camera do the talking.” Perhaps filming atrocities eliminates animosity, she wonders amid SUMAC’s frenzied arrangement of clamoring noise, only to answer herself later, “but what do we return to?” during the 17-minute closer “Breathing Fire”. Ultimately, we have come full circle – from televised revolution to idolized retribution. Backwards thinking has blinded harsh realities: “seems like every time there’s a bomb, there’s a round of applause.” Cameras and technology are not a solution, but merely a distraction. We’ve tried to run, to make change, but resistance is futile.
With The Film, SUMAC and Moor Mother have taken an unprecedented approach, reexamining Afrofuturism through a deliciously dissonant and catastrophic lens, resulting in one of the year’s most essential listens. The Film suggests that we’ve lost a true sense of our freedoms, and that our sense of self is not individualized, but downloaded from a digital ether shared with millions of others. Yet what is offered here goes far beyond a simple warning – it’s much too late for that: “We all lost our worth”, Ayewa concludes. We’ve exhausted our chances to reconsider what it means to be free. The gods of mythology no longer offer immortality. All that remains are memories from Planet Earth floating through the cold, empty vacuum of deep space.
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