symbiont

On Spider Tales, his 2020 debut album, Jake Blount blazed a trail through the forest of roots music in general and the thickets of West African and American Black folklore in particular. In 2022’s The New Faith, Blount distinguished himself as a composer of Afrofuturist fiction set to music, drawing upon old recordings of Black religious services to create a spiritualised soundscape in which to recount a journey in the aftermath of planetary environmental collapse. With symbiont, Blount and collaborator Mali Obomsawin (of the Odanak First Nation) confront the threat posed by climate change and social injustice by combining source material ranging from shape-note hymns, traditional spirituals, slave songs and First Nations’ anthems to sequenced beats, synthesised drones, fuzzy electric guitars and gourd banjos. Recorded in their respective home studios, these disparate elements were mixed and mastered to produce a singular concept album, which, according to the composers, ‘had to be ceremonial, frightening, comforting and ecstatic in turn — sometimes simultaneously.’ After a short prelude, ‘What’s You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire’, leads off symbiont with a crossroads dilemma set to a funky groove supporting a monologue by Obomsawin and a recorded excerpt from Red Power poet John Trudell’s ‘We are Power’ Thanksgiving Day speech in 1980. A tweaking of the spiritual ‘My Way’s Cloudy’ features subtle alteration to the traditional lyrics, a sweet and spooky mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and robust backing vocals by Red Lake Ojibwe singer Joe Rainey. ‘Stars Begin to Fall’ incorporates stylistic notes from the original gospel version, a banjo tune from enslaved Black Jamaicans in 1687, and instrumentation and production inspired by contemporary Black urban and industrial music. ‘Live Humble’ starts out sounding like a Persian dub mix, then picks up tempo as an exultant chorus carries the titular message before a jagged electric guitar cuts through and fades out the track (a possible nod to Blount’s youthful days in Virginia where he played in funk and metal bands). Blount and Obomsawin possess agile, resonant voices that combine emotive expression with clear articulation. ‘Come Down Ancients’ showcases their exceptional harmony singing while ‘Mother’ gives Obomsawin a special place to shine. Despite the hype about alchemical processing and prophetic/futurist inclinations, the composers insist that symbiont’s themes and settings are mostly rooted in the empirical here and now: ‘We believe that the worlds envisioned in symbiont are near enough to our present reality that the listener need not stretch their imagination too far to grasp our concept.’ If one insists on finding fault with symbiont, it’s that the clear and present danger posed by climate change and its social consequences has been wrapped in such an imaginatively conceived, eminently enjoyable package.