Moor Mother – “Great Bailout, The” – [Anti]

Thurston Hunger   7/24/2024   A Library, CD

Swirl of sound, going down…like a vortex in the ocean off the shores of England. Moor Mother is at the helm but she is not the captain of this damned ship, instead she hovers a few feet in front of the prow. Conducting synth storms, channeling guest siren voices – sometimes sweet and soulful, other times wailing with anguished anger. History lessons don’t lessen the hurt/ire/cost and above all willful noise on this release. Moor Mother’s poetry comes in and out on the songs, a narrator cum inquisitor, traversing time travails. Moor Mother mixes so well, able to float Lonnie Holley’s wavering voice over harp, or cut up thrash bursts with Maja (!!!) Ratkje. Ample palette of samples: splatter jazz to seasick piano to industrial hiphop to spiritual noise to blackened blues to rot ‘n roll to tragic clarinet with a teapot whistle boiling over an inferno. An album that invites replays and research – from Sage Stargate via Hunter’s Point to biting Barker’s Bible via the National Portrait Gallery to a quantum Spectrum national anthem performed by Camae Ayewa before a Sixer’s game seven. Spem in Alium indeed.
-Thurston Hunger