Review Summary: African, American, and European cultures come together to make a jam album.
If it wasn’t for listening to NPR from the backseat of my dad’s Civic, I never would’ve listened to this album, or even known it existed in the first place. When the man interviewing Otura Mun, the frontman of IFE, used the phrase “creating electronic music that channeled the African diaspora” I knew this was something that would likely be worth checking out.
IIII+IIII (apparently pronounced “edgy-og-beh”) is the debut album from IFE, an Afro-Caribbean ensemble. This is already a group with an interesting history, because they essentially spawned by accident. The aforementioned frontman used to go by Mark Underwood, and ended up with a free flight to Puerto Rico. He was from Indiana, but this trip completely transformed him. After bathing in the culture of the Caribbean, he became a Yoruban high priest, and created the IFE ensemble.
Sonically, there are three different cultures of music with a direct flow into
IIII+IIII. The most prominent one is the culture of Islam, as the Arabic language is the very first thing on the album. The second track, ‘BANGAH (Pico y Palo)’ also uses Arabic to form the closest thing the song has to a hook. “As-salamu alaykum” is a traditional Arabic greeting, and it’s repeated throughout the track. However, the American history of music is also shown influencing music from IFE. The very first phrase in the introduction song is saturated with Auto-Tone, which is something American musicians started using to cover up their mistakes. That’s not how it’s being used here. On many major sections of this project, effects like Auto-Tune are used to embellish the nuances that are already there. Every song drips with human elements when the rhythm is slightly off, or pitch in the instruments is very subtly imperfect, and these programs are used to push that into the forefront.
The third culture that makes its way into
IIII+IIII is the era of European dance music from the likes of Kraftwerk and Daft Punk. Many songs on the album are over six minutes long, and their beats loop the whole time. It’s one aspect that weighs the album down, as it diminishes the possibility of these long songs being truly from the heart. At that point, it becomes closer to a ‘jam album’ than anything else. It’s something you put on when you just want to relax. That is widely appealing to a lot of people, but it’s not exactly how IFE brands the album. Going into it, the listener might be looking for deep, spiritual elements. They likely want something that’s very personal. But when songs loop like they plan on just riding out for three minutes, it takes something away from the personal experience. Although songs like ‘HIGHER LOVE’ and ‘UMBO (Come Down)’ start out sounding wonderful, they trail on for too long.
Other than the blatant religious elements of it, or the peculiar arrangement of instrumentation, there isn’t much to say about
IIII+IIII. It’s definitely an enjoyable album, but only for a certain amount of time. When songs drone on for almost seven minutes, they’re not unbearable or anything close to that, but I want to turn them off. And after several listens to it, I don’t have this urge to come back.
