A Cautionary tale which blends several genres into questions for us all.
‘symbiont’ is a truly extraordinary album. It feels futuristic but, in places, old-fashioned. Doom-laden but hopeful in equal measure. It is never a comfortable listen, but it is exceptionally thought-provoking and worth listening to.
It opens with a news bulletin about climate change affecting different parts of the world through flood and drought. It is then interrupted by reports of unexplained voices of our ancestors. From the outset, the feeling of this album is genuinely dystopian.
Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin have used so many styles of music to tell this story none of which gel together easily but it is this unease that gives such overall dark beauty. Each track is distinctive, ranging from quite a jolly romp on ‘No Hiding Place’ to a traditional spiritual feel on ‘In the Garden’. It is a remarkably diverse piece of work using hymns, spirituals, Caribbean banjo tunes, sequenced beats, drones, and searing guitars. The emotionless almost AI voice of Blount on ‘The Green Road’ is eerie and unsettling. It has a real ‘Blade Runner’ air.
Throughout, Indigenous sounds are the main link that creates the continuity. As it is essentially a concept piece it needs to be listened to continuously from start to finish so may not appeal to today’s Spotify generation.
The promotional material with symbiont asserts “Jake and Mali have made an Indigenous and Afrofuturistic folklore between acoustic and electric “. They comment “Climate change’s many consequences travel like smoke imperiling bodies and communities as surely as they shroud the sky. The music of symbiont is an attempt to join our peoples in sound and movement as we stave off death together”. Dark stuff indeed.
This may not be Americana in its natural style, but it is a remarkable album that needs hearing by the widest possible audience. Highly recommended.
As a footnote, the definition of symbiont is ‘An organism that is very closely associated with another usually larger organism’. Who knew?
