Audiopile Review: You may associate Chicago’s Thrill Jockey label with the coolly cerebral sounds of Tortoise and Oval. But, in recent years, Thrill Jockey has been tilling the extreme left field of heavy music. Acts like Sumac (featuring Vancouver’s Nick Yacyshyn) make post-metal that’s more post than metal. Especially in their collaborations with Japanese noise rock deity Keiji Haino, they make music where metal is less a genre and more an aura. They’re operating at such a rarified level that they’re apparently ready to tackle one of popular music’s great taboos: the combination of heavy metal and hip-hop. Or so we must assume from the existence of ‘The Film’, a new collaboration with Moor Mother. To be fair, Moor Mother has the same relationship with regular rap music that Sumac has with metal. As you might expect, then, the usual pitfalls of combining rap with metal are glided over effortlessly. Most importantly, these artists share a commitment to fully abstracted heaviness, so the intermingling of their auras is as natural as can be. Furthermore, rather than being a case of kindred spirits getting it together and jamming it out, this is an ambitious, coherent album. As the title suggests, ‘The Film’ is a cinematic, narrative-driven work. But that shared commitment to abstraction means this is a film you’ll have to experience many times before you really get a grip on the story. While this is anything but coolly cerebral, it’s as smart as hell and genuinely innovative.

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Double LP version. Pink color vinyl. “What happens when you combine SUMAC, a band that uses the volume, distortion, and guitar-centric approach of metal to make music that has the malleability of jazz and textural exploration of noise with Moor Mother, a poet and sound artist that has deconstructed hip hop to a point where it’s less about rhyme and rhythm (though obviously both are present in her work) and more about oratorical cadence and power? The Film is an album that takes attributes of both artists’ work and finds common ground in shifting musical patterns, and expressive force. The record is a musical thumbing of their noses at the more traditional approaches of their respective fields, an innovative, powerhouse of an album. The Film’s moniker speaks to the fact that it is conceived and delivered as a complete album, a full story or narrative. Moor Mother puts it best: ‘The idea is to create a moment outside of the convention. This is a work of art. Thinking about the work as a film, instead of an album or a collection of songs. This task is impossible in an industry that wants to force everything into a box of consumption. You won’t understand or get the full picture until the artwork is completed. This work is developing and is requesting more agency within the creative process.’ The Film does have clear themes running throughout — again Moor Mother expounds: ‘the themes are universal in nature — land — displacement — the climate — human rights and freedoms — war and peace — the idea of running away from the many violent forces and horrific systems of man and empire.’ Heavy, holy, hypnotizing — beyond existence, beyond the fettered constraints of normality, past the false notions of the indoctrinated disguised as the organic, planets form; the detritus of cosmic stuff merges into galaxies, into something that can sound like it’s populated by suns. The Film is just such a work, a nebulitic collaboration between SUMAC and Moor Mother. The Film was recorded at Studio Litho in Seattle with Scott Evans. The album includes appearances by guest vocalists Kyle Kidd, Sovie, and Candice Hoyes.”