Double Life

Chronique

With his quartet Here Lies Man, guitarist/composer/arranger Chico Mann and his band explore the unlikely nexus point of Black Sabbath and Fela Kuti, pairing blazing, metal-informed riffs with Afrobeat rhythms. Some members of Here Lies Man came from work with the long-running Afrobeat collective Antibalas, and their heavy take on the sound resulted in multiple high-powered releases, beginning with a self-titled album in 2017. Double Life introduces an interesting conceptual twist, taking 14 tracks from across Here Lies Man's discography (right up to their fourth full-length, 2020's Ritual Divination) and reworking them, stripping away the vocals, toning down the metal edges, and pushing the songs into a more woozy, funk-fortified territory. The album is released under Mann's name, but all four members of Here Lies Man play the tunes in a live-in-the-studio setting, which is ironic considering that early Here Lies Man records were largely the studio creations where Mann played most of the instruments himself. The live tracking and loose atmosphere of Double Life allows the band to gel in a way that's nostalgic and dreamy, sounding instantly like an album made 40 years or more before its time. In its original form on Here Lies Man's 2018 album You Will Know Nothing, the song "Summon Fire" was a fireball of distorted guitar blasts and frenzied vocals full of apocalyptic imagery. On Double Life, the fully instrumental version puts the organ in the forefront, with the wobbly guitar figures and swaggering percussion taking supportive roles in an arrangement that's more New Orleans funk than stoner metal. Songs like "That Much Closer to Nothing" and "Blindness" retain some of the tightly wound energy of their originals, but translate the foreboding dread of heavy guitars and tense rhythms into something decidedly more lighthearted. On the whole, Double Life recasts the ominous tones of Here Lies Man's work into shuffling and cinematic grooves. The album speaks to the dexterity of both the musicians and the songs themselves, which are flexible enough to shine whether they're presented as diabolical Afro-metal or more relaxed soundtrack fare.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo