WOEBOT

This post has taken a little longer to materialise than I'd originally planned. I wrote to Sa-Ra a week ago. They have a contact form on their quite minimal website. I clicked it and spewed out about seven questions. Not quite as hopeless as you'd maybe suspect as I noticed that other internet bods had had some luck getting hold of them. Maybe my tone was a bit too free-wheeling, shucks, I dunno? Perhaps it's a good thing, as now I'm free to be as critical as the subject demands.

Before I start heaping praise on the project then, it's a good idea to start with my reservations. I dunno, this whole music business CV shit they peddle, man it makes me want to puke. I just don't care about their past licking the balls of major industry "talent", about their engineering gigs and whatnot. That all three of them have this kind of past, well as far as I'm concerned it doesn't translate into tasty supergroup action. As if being a supergroup was some kind of boon anyway! Supergroup, yuk. Like a gigantic flashing pink neon sign: "Supergroup"

This tendency naturally connects to the phenomenon of the guest spot, hence Pharohe Monche and Jay Dilla on the worst tracks on 'The Second Time Around". If they ever get round to making their LP it'll be wall-to-wall Beyonce. Ditto the "Dark Matter and Phonography CD", it's nothing but a resume of their remix work. I've noticed that one or other of them (or is it all of them, sloppiness triumphs) have been signed up to A&R for the re-congealing Rawkus records, hmm looks like the typical Sa-Ra industry insider shenanigans. They'll get lost in it. Their genius will get lost in a maze of demographic profiling and market stats.

Also Kanye. The Kanye connection. Kanye gets quoted on the sticker on the sleeve. Kanye etc. Kanye has lost it. The second LP? Rubbish. Man, what a disappointment..... I heard Kanye on the Westwood show the other day, wow what a fucking embarassment. Like watching two guide dogs waltzing. Please stop freestyling! Please stop trying to appear modest! Just...stop!

Having said all this, I just adore Sa-Ra. They've truly managed to transcend all their own bullshit. In spite of their insistence on how brilliant they are, they've managed to be brilliant. Their recent pinnacles "Intoxicated", "Second Time Around", "Glorious" and "Hanging by a String" have outshone everything else made in the past year.

"Intoxicated" is so sublimely slight you almost hear past it the first time around. Since when has Hip-Hop managed to sound so strange and tender? Chugging into frame on a Trans-Europe-Express drum pattern, geijin bamboo synth, muted push-me-pull-you group harmonies quivering out of earshot. Grown men going "ooh oh ooh oh". Sighs.

I've gone digital before on how stunned I was by "The Second Time Around", this track literally wobbles out of the speakers, stands upright in the sitting room quivering like steel jelly, clopping doubled drums. The lyric is interesting too in the vapid context of a lot of Platinum Hip-Hop, the message is sensuous and dirty not so pornographic and clean.

"Glorious", well I have Jess to thank for alerting me to this, though I suppose like the Russian fishing trawler I am, I would have hoovered it up sooner or later. "Glorious", again the voices perfectly pitched under the beats, instrumentalised and doubly so by distortion. I swear that's a Maximum Joy bass-line, but the chorus (blinks) strong shades of Duran Duran's "Notorious". Drones cycle up and down the soundscape.

"Hanging on a String" just so mentally decomposed. Any more disintegration and we're into Mark Stewart and The Mafia territory. The drums come in and they're *supposed* to hold it together, but instead they just kick it even further out of shape. Literally hanging together by a thread. It's at moments like these that I ponder the Sa-Ra/Sun Ra connection.

There are many other great great tracks: "Birds", "Daylight", "Jumbo", "Love Stomp", "Rosebuds" and "Space Theme". Really special stuff. My man gumdrops at Dissensus holds a candle for "Butterscotch", "Downtown", "Hollywood" and "Bitch", however these tracks haven't had an official release yet. I spoke to the guy at Honest Jon's and he's pretty sure they have only been available as a CD-R which apparently some DJs have managed to get hold of, and which has presumably been cc'd to mates. Their catalogue IS a bit of a mess. The great Cosmic Dust and Cosmic Lust EPs are only available as super-expensive Japanese imports. What's the deal there? Anyway track breakouts bore me, so I'll leave it at that.

So what are Sa-Ra up to? If you wanted a really crude snapshot of their sound it'd be as follows: like "Juicy Fruit"-era Mtume, very Marcus Miller-period Miles (think "Tutu" and "Man with the Horn") a little 1980s George Duke..... Do you get the gist? That's right, it's a re-vivification of the 80's post-cosmic Jazz. That time when the heavy hitters abandoned concept LPs for some commercial Jazz-Funk action. Everyone knows Mtume right? Well Mtume started out with Miles on "Get Up With It" then went solo on straight up cosmic Jazz like "Rebirth Cycle" (pyramids on the cover...) before penning groovy Jheri-curl-tastic LPs like "Juicy Fruit", "You Me and He" and "Theater of the Mind". Still shades of the cosmic present, albeit transmutated into slick paens to the orgone. Good shit.

My theory, and I put this to Sa-Ra (in my, ahem, unanswered email) was that they were using this music to reverse engineer the trajectory of the capitalistic Hip-Hop hegemony, using it to open a wormhole in time, a metaphorical illogical but lateral step backwards, by way of an escape route in much the same way that a Queen in chess may advance forward, yet also retreat diagonally. Anyway we'll never know what they thought about that, but if Afro-American music gets yet more cosmic please feel to write to me and tell me how clever I am.

The other 80's current is the New Wave inflection present in Sa-Ra's music. This gives their oevre a zeitgeisty feel which it appears Kanye is only just wising up to (via Catchdubs). The whole miscegenation aspect of this is really appealing vis-a-vis SFJ's fetishisation of Liquid/Sugarhill 1980's New York. Skin colour not such a big issue. I like to flash on Bootsy digging Devo (true), Bernie Worrell playing with Talking Heads and the first Prince LP. Old Skool New Wave Funk.

People say their sound owes something to Jay Dilla's. I'm not qualified to comment just yet. Certainly Dilla's fluidity in the face of Techno and Disco sorta indicates this might be right, but (again still awaiting concrete evidence) I suspect the comparison may be superficial.

Will Sa-Ra be massive? Will they be the next Timba-tunes in the absence of Lil' Jon managing to pull off the feat? Hmmm. I dunno. I suspect not. In interviews (with more levelheaded journalists) they talk about wanting to operate at a Coldplay 'cross-over' level. However the problem seems to be that their music kicks off when they're at their most care-free and introspective. Whenever they "go for it" (and this is usually sign-posted by the presence of those characteristic guest artistes) they stumble, become tedious and generic, like on "Double Dutch". "Fish Fillet" and "Thriller".

Just because they look appear be a Jazz-Funk/Nu-Soul outfit and Gilles Peterson likes them, you'd be wrong to write 'em off. Most interesting crew in the world.