Sault is a mysterious British group that doesn’t show up in public or give interviews. They release albums galore: two in 2019, then two more in 2020. As the chorus of praise has grown, they have resisted any temptation to drop the veil of secrecy. “Don’t need an ego anyway” was a chorus in a song called “Free” from last year’s album Untitled (Rise).
Her determination to let the music speak for itself has a polemical edge. Black struggle is a recurring theme in their songs, a soundtrack for the new civil rights era of the Black Lives Matter movement. It draws on a number of styles and triangulates between the UK, the US and Africa. Echoes of Soul II Soul, D’Angelo, Fela Kuti and ESG give their songs a vintage feel, but they don’t sound retro. Instead, there is a strong sense of timeliness. The past flows into the present. Meanwhile, the future is at stake.
Nine is their new album. It is available as a free download from the Sault website and will be withdrawn from circulation 99 days after its release. The tripled numbers stand for 999, the UK phone number for emergency services. It’s a reference in part to policing, a major focus of Black Lives Matter’s protests against racism. However, Nine’s 99-day lifespan also refers to a state of emergency in what is now London among the city’s Afro-Caribbean communities.
The album begins with a playground singing that sounds like a children’s choir. The laugh on the track titled “Haha” takes on a bitter quality as themes of lost childhood and broken families take shape. “London Gangs” sets the tone with a thick, distorted bassline and stuttering drums. A singer recites a mantra-like set of texts about the increasing level of youth violence in the city. The music is claustrophobic punk funk that rises for a moment to allow a singer to play a somber, ironic pun on Sault’s band name: “The salt will heal the wounds.”
Although the songs do not contain any additional information, previous albums have been attributed to producer Inflo, aka Dean Wynton Josiah Cover. The credited singers on these previous albums included rapper Kid Sister and soul singer Cleo Sol, who are believed to be repeating their roles on Nine. The only named participants on the nine tracks are a Londoner named Michael Ofo, who recounts a disturbing memory of his father’s murder on “Mike’s Story”, and the rapper Little Simz, who appears on “You From London”. (Inflo is Simz ‘regular producer for her solo work. He has also co-produced Michael Kiwanuka’s last two albums.)
“Trap Life” has a dense percussive energy, with lyrics sung about wanting to be free from zip code wars and police repression. “Fear” locks itself into a powerful groove with distorted electronic melodies and a bursting bassline while a male singer recites lyrics about pain and anger. The claustrophobia seems to lift for “Bitter Streets” with a slight bossa nova beat, but a singer’s repetitive vocal melody curvilinearly creates a different kind of enclosure. “You didn’t leave, you fell in love with the street,” she sings to a Sagittarius she knew as a child.
“You From London” is the album’s only misstep, an irritating reproach to imaginary American audiences who think London is a place of flat bread, bad teeth and royals, not entrenched social and racial problems. “Light’s in Your Hands”, which is characterized by the typical American form of the empowerment ballad, provides a better transatlantic understanding. It contains a man’s spoken word account of a childhood devastated by gang violence. Giving voice to the unheard of is the point of Nine, not to give visibility or fame to its creators.
★★★★ ☆
‘Nine’ is published by Forever Living Originals
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