The Cycle

Mourning [A] BLKstar scrutinize the reality of their surroundings, write straightforward love songs on occasion, and arent alone as classification-evading synthesists of soul, blues, gospel, jazz, hip-hop, and avant-electronics. Still, theres an otherworldly quality to The Cycle. The fifth album from the Cleveland collective in four years is the most distinctive display of their communal and practice makes perfect-meets-wham-bam methodologies. Facilitated by organizer, bassist, and sample wiz RA Washington, the approach encourages audacious input from all eight singers and players, rigorous rehearsal, and in this case a two-day recording process at their storefront nerve center. It manifests the peak work of a true band -- though they favor the term collective -- with unique tensions between precision and spontaneity and the past and present. It starts and ends like a love tale gone bad. In the bewitched opener If I Can If I May, the rich voice of James Longs, sounding like it was transferred from an unreleased Norman Whitfield session circa 1971, proclaims My heart is melted, thawed out against the odds. The conclusion is the heaving ballad 4 Days, where Longs and powerhouse LaToya Kent exchange verses that involve them independently observing their hearts ditched in a field. When they both whisper Wake up, wake up, it sounds like vicious emotional scarring more than Sexual Healing. The range of sounds and expressions between the two songs is vast. Theres disquieting industrial judder and elegantly smeared soul in Sense of an Ending, another duet regarding a strained relationship. In Something JD Said, only a stammering bass drum and a shrill noise-riff support the drawling Kent: Where delusion is your master, and the dollar is the whip, and your self-hatred be chains. A couple songs flit between offering consolation and tough love, like Mist :: Missed, a hybrid of boom bap, trap, and Afrobeat that confronts a wayward individual with dismissive if caring language. Just as prominent as Longs, Kent, and the two-person brass section is Kyle Kidd, whose ringing voice belts and wails to spellbinding effect. Hes especially potent in the yearning Deluze, over an unlikely and perfect union of knocking drums and church organ, and in the crashing Debtors, he tears down the house. The interlaced revolutionary words of Fred Hampton and the groups additional observations in opposition of white supremacy add intricacy and might. ~ Andy Kellman