Smashbomb

"I discovered this album quite recently and it transported me very much. I've had times in my life where I've wanted to go in a more electronic direction, and I find her work very inspiring because it's mostly electronic work, which she does a lot of on her own in terms of production and such, and at the same time it sounds very organic and connected to the earth. Not everybody can do that; to do electronics and make it sound like the earth. It's an art form. I just think it's perfect. The songs are incredibly creatively arranged and written; it's all there. It all seems very effortless even though I'm sure it's taken her a lot of work to get it that perfect. But it's seamless and you're transported from one song to the next. Some of the transitions are just so inspired; it's inspired and it's inspiring. It's rooted, and that gives it a sort of spiritual value which is lacking, and which we're losing. We live in a system that will seek to cut us off from our roots and cut us off from our connection with the universe. And that's our sense of direction, like the birds: they know when to migrate. They have this connection to the universe and that tells them, they have this sense that comes from the earth up, and we are losing this. But it's present in her album, this connection, in a very vivid way. And of course it's nourishing because it's pointing in that direction: this is where we connect to the earth, to our past, to our ancestors who knew so much. In the past 50 years we've unlearned so much. Our great-grandparents probably knew a lot about the land, where things come from and the cycles, and these are very important things so you aren't disoriented in this world. You have a sense of how things work in the natural world. There was probably less disorientation then than now, in terms of people consuming fewer antidepressants and things like that. Juana has this quality of being able to connect to ancestors and a whole knowledge that's been there for thousands of years and we're now cutting ourselves off from. I wouldn't blame it on the technology itself, but more on how it's being used, and to what ends. It's technology in the service of a system that will seek to disconnect, so we consume more and think less, creating desires for objects that we don't really need, and narcissism, and developing aspects of human traits that should really be kept in check."

Source

Kudos

Moses Boyd recommended Grounantion by Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari in Music (curated)

"That one was quite deep for me because again, growing up in church and being a believer; my family being from the West Indies - my mum’s side from Jamaica, my dad’s side from Dominica - I remember going to church and it was authentic West Indians there in their 40s, 50s that now live in the UK but have kept these traditions, they were singing these songs just without the drums. So when I first heard this, something just went - ‘Hang on?’ I remember being four and hearing this person sing that song but swap Selassie for this or that. It had that same spiritual element I was so used to, just in a very different form. It was like a weird full circle thing for me. It was almost like going back home. These drums are taking me somewhere, but also I'm being carried by these songs I know. It was beautiful to check out more of what Count Ossie was doing and people that were part of his band like Cedric Brooks. He was infusing a lot of the jazz elements that he's hearing from Coltrane or Ornette Coleman. That's deep, you’re deep in the heels of Kingston, aware of Ornette and them man. Like Duke Ellington had to come and visit him, you know, there’s a photo of him and Duke Ellington in the bush. You know he's got something that's important, not only important for culture but it's spiritually important for the Nyabinghi tradition. For me when I heard that record, particularly Grounation, where they’re going through loops for 20 minutes, it’s that thing again with soundsystems where you ‘wheel up a riddim’ or at church when the tune would just keep going. It was something I’d never heard but I also felt like it wasn’t foreign, those experiences are so wicked and that influenced the whole fascination with drum culture and drum languages, spirituality connected to drums, music orientated around the drums. I got into Batá and music for the Orishas and things that are all over the Diaspora in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America. And when you listen to it, the recording’s so rags but it just couldn't work if you put it in Abbey Road. It gave me a bit more confidence when I was doing my record that if I go to someone’s house and I show up with a handheld recorder, as long as it feels right it doesn't matter. Big studio, small studio, my phone as long as it’s got that feeling that I was going for."

Source

Kudos