Multidimensional duo Divide and Dissolve release their third full length studio album ‘Gas Lit’ on Invada Records, produced by Ruban Neilson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
Divide and Dissolve members Takiaya Reed (saxophone, guitar, live effects) and Sylvie Nehill (drums, live effects) create instrumental music that is both heavy and beautiful, classically influenced yet thrillingly contemporary and powerfully expressive and communicative. Their music has the ability to speak without words and utilises frequencies to interact with the naturally occurring resonance.
‘We Are Really Worried About You’ presents a formidable saxophone sound giving way to a surge of crushing percussion and heavy guitar riffs. ‘Denial’ is a potent blend of Takiaya’s ominous and unsettling sax that blows wide open into riff city for almost eight glorious minutes. Both tracks encapsulate the message behind the music: to undermine and destroy the white supremacist colonial frameworks and to fight for indigenous sovereignty, black and indigenous liberation, water, earth and indigenous land given back.
For fans of James Baldwin, Osa Atoe, Adrienne Davies, the ocean and freshwater, breath/breathing, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Afro futurism, indigenous futurism, indigenous sovereignty, slavery abolition, resistance, the forest, bodies of water, being submerged, the railroad and Ai Ogawa.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: At no point throughout 'Gas Lit' do you come away with the impression that they're just having a good time. This is a visceral and intense, but entirely enjoyable fusion of neo-classical timbres with metallic heft and shoegazey walls of sound. Towering and impeccably constructed.
TRACK LISTING
Oblique
Prove It
Did You Have Something To Do With It (ft. Minori Sanchiz-Fung)
Denial
Far From Ideal
It’s Really Complicated
Mental Gymnastics
We Are Really Worried About You