Description
SKU/Barcode: 045775024127
The avant-garde ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic shows pluck in taking on a genre that almost no one else from its realm, and few white artists in general, have touched: the African-American spiritual. The group describes itself as having a "garage-rock-band-meets-chamber-ensemble aesthetic." The chamber ensemble part is expressed in the aggressive but clearly articulated instrumental textures, featuring guitar, saxophone, or flute, various keyboards, and percussion; the paradoxical effect is of a wall of sound with a good deal of detail. But what gives this disc a really odd quality is the garage rock part -- the rhythms used are, for the most part, simple in the extreme, and that sets up a fundamental clash with the melodies of the spirituals, which, however they may have been arranged, carry a good deal of internal complexity. Except for a few pieces (like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot) that have a more ambient backing, the Birdsongs' arrangements emphasize the downbeat with an almost stomping intensity -- an odd concept from an African-American rhythmic perspective. The music definitely gets your attention, and you'll either like it or hate it, but it can be said that the performance of baritone Oral Moses works in favor of the unique combination here. For one thing, he's a powerful, resonant singer with the volume and intensity to stand up to the sound of the instrumental ensemble; the grouping as a whole has a powerful, primal sound. For another, he takes the rhythms in stride; if you listen closely to the way he sings the spirituals, you'll hear how he subtly reworks them rhythmically to fit the new arrangements. The profusion of new arrangements of the spirituals in recent years is a most intriguing feature of the contemporary scene, and while some of those arrangements may qualify as extreme, none is quite like this. Whatever conclusion your sampling may lead you to, it's unlikely that you'll feel Birdsongs of the Mesozoic has shown disrespect to the spirituals and the concrete history of suffering embedded in them.
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