Xaybu: The Unseen

Album review

Saxophonist Steve Lehman debuted the eponymously titled Sélébéyone in 2016. The collision of modernist jazz, underground hip-hop, and electronics by a septet from three continents shook up the jazz world. Jazz and hip-hop hybrids weren't new, but Sélébéyone sounded alien, other, with its left-field rap, multilingual nu-break flows, vanguard jazz, and African polyrhythmic concepts, all colored by experimental electronics. Several world tours and a pandemic later, Sélébéyone return as a band on Xaybu: The Unseen. The septet from the debut is replaced by a quintet here -- keyboardist Carlos Homs and bassist Drew Gress are absent. Lehman and Paris-based Maciek Lasserre play saxophones, Damion Reid plays drums, and American HPrizm (aka High Priest of Antipop Consortium) and Senegalese rap sensation Gaston Bandimic deliver spoken word and rapped vocals in English and Wolof (the primary language in most of West Africa). The set was deeply inspired by Islam's mystical concept of al-Ghaib -- that which is unknowable and unseeable. (Bandimic, HPrizm, and Lasserre are Sufi Muslims.) Lehman and Lasserre evenly split composing and production duties. The pared-down Sélébéyone puts more emphasis on beats and conversant interaction between alto and soprano saxophones on one hand, and vocalists, electronics, and rhythms on the other. The set bookends, both titled "Time Is the First Track," offer the saxophonists engaging in droning, contrasting tonalities amid jittery rhythms and ambient electronics that frame HPrizm's lament: "I'm doing time but I want to move freely/Everything and nothing is real/Separated and joined in a pot/Remember the America before amnesia hit/Way before reconstruction." The single "Lamina" commences with an electronic drone framed by alto saxophone and a pulsing kick drum. HPrizm is declamatory before Bandimic rushes in -- double time, fiery, and political -- rapping in Wolof. The saxophonists interact with Reid and nearly industrial electronic polyrhythms. "Liminal" is fiercely delivered by Bandimic (English translations are available on Pi Recordings' website) as skittering vanguard electro is peppered in, buoyed by Reid's angular breaks and abstracted conversation from the horns. HPrizm enters in the second half with the prophetic exhortation: "Victory is coming. Glory is near/I see us winning. Triumphant. Don't say it with me. Think it.... Hypnotize your mind and let go of fear." On the wonderful "Gagaku," the rappers are joined by the disembodied voice of Billy Higgins discussing his Islamic spirituality amid clattering, oddly metered rhythm tracks and interplay from sweetly dissonant soprano and alto saxophones. Jackie McLean's voice is sampled to introduce the truly eerie "Go In." Saxes drift in, synths rise like shadows, and HPrizm's words quiver with agitated yet haunted energy. "Zeraora" is the set's most urgent cut. Clock chimes and jagged electronic rhythms over funky drums introduce first HPrizm, then Bandimic. The former offers flowing observations on spirituality and creative life, the latter rages at war: "The cemetery rises like a military coup against you." Xaybu: The Unseen is more chaotic, gritty, and abstract than its predecessor, but also more musical and brand-new from this band of explorers.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo