Free Jazz from Slavery

VINYL FORMAT. "If one were dim enough to go about explaining the new double LP from Hexlove/Faulouah by pointing up parallels between it and the future-thinking music which has surely influenced its creator, I imagine the task wouldn't be too daunting. One may first notice that Free Jazz From Slavery is awash in the sublimely complex percussion patterns of 20th century composers like Harry Partch, Eugene Kurtz, and Iannis Xenakis. Or one might wonder if Zac Nelson, the man in the cockpit of this thing, hadn't been listening to Another Green World since he was in the womb. And certainly it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the jibing spirit of early-'80s Pere Ubu experimentation is all over the more flippant efforts like 'Don't Say I Didn't Warm Yah' and the watery blurb that opens the record, 'Aztec vs. Dolphin.' This, though, is the wrong way to go about listening to or talking about any of Hexlove/Faulouah's work. Musical ancestors are worn proudly on Nelson's sleeve, but as eagerly as he celebrates them, he also delights in taking them, along with himself, down a peg. The snarky punning of the album's title, the faux-shamanic chanting and cooing, the deliberately murked-up and buzzing arrangements, all belie an agenda that involves not only a glad embrace of the less austere reaches of avant-gardism but a pointed critique of its elitism and intellectual posturing." --Steve Rodgers