A song like the frantic Swamp Thing, with its layers of intricate piano notes and funked-out bass, moves on too fast for pause but then … bam! The mellow Fingerprints takes the mood somewhere else entirely. Listening to Choose Your Weapon can hover between delirium and frustration, delight and outright annoyance, often in the very same beat. Just as you feel the group have settled into a groove, just for a second, off they spin and spiral into 20 others. Much of this is down to the group’s main life force, Nai Palm (the stage name of Naomi Saalfield, whose voice and guitar twist and turn, swoop, dart and flutter through a bewildering array of supple melodies and counter-counter-harmonics and fitful key changes. In others ( the single Breathing Underwater) this is the sort of psychedelic mesmerising adventure land populated by similar exploratory jazz fusion artists such as Annette Peacock and Erykah Badu. In some places (Prince Minikid, the florid and ever-changing Atari) it feels like all those strange electronic flourishes that artists such as Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder (notably on Innervisions) use to fill the spaces between the chart-topping hits, and casually bewitch their fans.
Whether or not you want to unlock its mysteries is up to you.
Over 18 tracks and 70 minutes, the four-piece touch upon modern jazz, polyrhythmic time structures, labyrinthine explorations of 1970s funk, scat-singing, samba, West African soul, pastoral prog rock in the style of Weather Report and Gentle Giant, sprawling electric fusion and elemental rhythms. P aul Bender, the bassist with Melbourne’s “future soul” band Hiatus Kaiyote, describes his band’s second album Choose Your Weapon as a “huge, massive, complex puzzle”.
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