- Jamal Moss's newest LP is one of his most beautiful and brutal.
- Last year, Jamal Moss put out the best album of his career. I don't say this lightly. For over two decades, Moss has been at the vanguard of American house music. Across various aliases, work in film, and his label Mathematic Recordings, he's one of the most prolific and uncompromising artists, the lonely champion of dance music at its most DIY. But even with this staggering output, Thanks 4 The Trax U Lost, was dazzling. It had the raw power of Chicago house, but the melodies were his most beautiful to date, free jazz riffs and IDM synths sashayed across his burnt out low end like ballerinas taking a solo. In his review, Andrew Ryce described the record's as Moss's "most romantic work to date." His follow-up, this time under his Hieroglyphic Being alias, The Moon Dance, is even more candlelight-and-roses, as he tightropes the line between the brutal and the brittle.
Both "The Moondance (Moon Walk Version)" and "An Eternal Star Beyond the Firmament" embody this yin-and-yang of stargazing and corrosion perfectly. The drums hit with such ferocity they sound like they're going to jump out of the grid and ask for your lunch money, but the jazzy melodies offer whimsy, as Moss cycles through synthesizer lines with a kid-like curiosity. While this contrast might sound unappealing, Moss is a subtle master of juxtaposition. On beatless opener, "When the Earth's Shadow Falls on the Moon," competing arpeggios are bathed in a corrosive bath of reverb.
Rather than just refining the sound he started on Thanks 4 The Trax U Lost, The Moon Dance tries out this formula with some other sounds as well. Both "Mawu" and "Lunar Mind Manipulations," are Perlon-school minimal tracks complete with strange synth sighs and clipped rhythms. He also throws a total curveball on one of the record's strongest tracks, "Purple Skies With Cotton Candy." It starts out as a dubstep tune with sub-bass pulses, dubby delay, and broken drum patterning. But he then locks into a house groove with some of the record's richest instrumentation with hand drums, a xylophone-like plonk and, of course, some 303 noodling.
Speaking to Resident Advisor this past summer, Moss explained that when he makes and plays music, he doesn't think about the audience. Rather, he knows the people that come and see him and buy his records are, as he put it, "part of a sonic cult, an audio demographic personality [...] So the thought of audiences not being into it isn't an option." While this is certainly true of those who have already drunk the Hieroglyphic Being Kool-Aid, his latest run of records feel destined to convert more followers. The Moon Dance doesn't sacrifice any of Moss's trademark weirdness, but it does feel like an expansive and accessible entry point for those not yet in his "sonic cult."
Tracklist01. When The Earth's Shadow Falls On The Moon
02. The Moon Dance 05:14
03. Lunar Mind Manipulation
04. Tethered 2 The Divinely Spaces With-In
05. Fooled By The Divinely Spaces With-In
06. Celestial Poems Of The Lady With 10'000 Names
07. No Matter How Far We Are, We Can Always Share The Moon And Stars
08. Purple Skies With Cotton Candy
09. An Eternal Star Beyond The Firmament
10. Helium Three
11. Mawu