– THE MILITARY COUP –

On the front cover of new album Shrines, avant-garde rap duo Armand Hammer show a tiger trapped inside an apartment while an NYPD officer abseils outside of the window, shotgun in arms.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out which of the two, rappers Elucid and billy woods emote with.

Accordingly, first single off the record, Charms is a meditation on how to survive and how to thrive. In the outro, a sampled voice explains:

“I have heard people say, ‘oh, but I’m not content to survive.’ And implicit in that response, is a certain denigration of what survival is. That is to say, they reduce survival to a mere existence. And that is not survival. None of us are going to move the Earth one millimetre from its axis. But, if we do what we need to be doing, then we will leave something that continues beyond ourselves, and that is survival.”

Above a free-form pastiche of jazz flutes, junk-yard percussion and woozy atmospherics, the passage hits like a holy head-fuck which, if it doesn’t alter the way your world spins, may just change your perspective on it a little.

If you like this try my review of Medhane’s I’m Deadass.

Shrines is out now through Backwoodz Studioz.

MORE FROM THIS WEEK’S MIX

ZARA MCFARLANE: FUTURE ECHOES
AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE: HOODED PROCESSION
JOSHUA REDMAN + BRAD MEHLDAU + BRIAN BLADE + CHRISTIAN McBRIDE: RIGHT BACK ROUND AGAIN
MODERN NATURE: FLOURISH

Remember, you can find all of the tracks reviewed above in the 45 Revolutions per Minute playlist below or click to access the Future Jazz Playlist on Spotify itself.

If you like what you hear (or even if you don’t), please engage in dialogue with me @45rpm_Reviews on Twitter. And, if you’d like to receive updates weekly, please subscribe to the email list to get these recommendations sent to your inbox weekly.

Until next time, love and noise.

– SV –