Search dance music

Review: Camae Ayewa AKA Moor Mother has long talked about wanting to work with an orchestra, applying her verbal Afro-futurism and free-jazz experimentation to the classical domain. She recently did just that, delivering a grandiose live interpretation of her ninth album, The Great Bailout, alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra. It makes perfect sense: while the album itself is not fully orchestrated, it's a conceptual work dissecting the British slave trade, slavery and colonialism. Musically, there are two central focal points: her spoken word vocals and the beautiful singing of Lonnie Haley. These two vital voices weave in and out of sound worlds rooted in dark ambient, lo-fi hip-hop beats, free jazz instrumentation, out-there samples and clandestine aural textures. It's naturally raw, moody and weighty, but more importantly it's also a genuine masterpiece that deserves your attention.

Review: Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) delivers her latest album of import, The Great Bailout, using ironic economic terminology to satirise the British slave trade and its subsequent elision by the history books. A collaborative project that expands her original experimental hip-hop horizon, the likes of 'GUILTY' and 'ALL THE MONEY' hear new instrumental contributions from both canonical jazz artists and fresher faces, be they Lonnie Holley in the former camp and Mary Lattimore and Alya Al-Sultana in the latter. Moor Mother's revision is critical, calling out hidden ballasts such as the V&A Museum as purveyors of historical violence, while indulging a well-thought-out palette: no sound or texture is used here without careful thought as to its signification, whether wateriness to evoke the sense of drowning, or muted cacophony to recall the storms endured by victims of the trade in ships' hulls.