Heavensouls' latest project, Cantu of the Sower, delivers a delirious blend of blown-out noise, hyperactive stylistic shifts, and breakneck rhythms that can tip over into a state of heady relaxation for certain listeners. The six songs on the album glitter like rich seams of rare crystal, billowing from arcade glitter to compression-straining bass, sprite-like playfulness to warm, rushing brass.
A Hallucinatory Blend of Sounds
Languid trumpet lines float around trash-compactor crunch; sugary breakbeats reach tweaky maximalist peaks. The album is not shitpost music, fidgeting for its own sake. Cantu … glows with wonder at its own abundance, and the found-sound snippets of chatter ground its sense of an observant musician full of love for his fellow man.
A sample of civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael makes 20-year-old Chidi Obialo's mindset explicit: “I want my liberation more than I want anything else.” You hear it as Fela Kuti-worthy hand percussion is swept away by a hallucinatory, howling tide of guitar.
From Nigeria to Texas
Obialo was raised in Nigeria and moved to the US at age seven. As a teenager, he started putting out wildly varied, collagist music, aiming to create a “rabbit hole” for listeners to get lost in. His funny, glitchy duo with Atlanta's Stickerbush, Sidepeices, showcases his shitpost sensibility. But this year's Westside Trapped, his gorgeously heavy love letter to Nigeria, is more approachable, in keeping with Sault's luxuriant spirituals.
Already 15 releases into a brief career, Obialo's talent for delirious, head-spinning beauty is clear, whichever way he chooses to express it. Cantu of the Sower is released via NTS Recordings on 7 October.
