Review Summary: "There were spirits in that recording studio! I remember a feeling of spiritual strength while we were recording! Images and sounds reverberating off the walls!"
It's hard to discuss this point without coming across as hopelessly cheesy, so I'm not going to beat around the bush with it -
King of Kings almost feels like an album that was made for me. Not for people
like me, I mean literally
me. It's hard to explain it, but it's just a feeling that can't leave me everytime I click play and the hypnotic, endlessly groovy jams floor me like few things have in quite a long while. It's obvious that it isn't true, but the more nuances I find the more I convince myself of it.
You see, from start to finish,
King of Kings sounds more or less exactly like the album I would make if I wanted to give spiritual funky jazz a shake and I had the necessary talent for it. Those without pulses or abhorrance towards joy need not read on - Whatever your idea of good music is, I guarantee you this isn't it. This is the kind of music to match the splendor of the world's greatest inventions. The kind of music with enough fire to match the sun. A journey that is equal parts murky and raw as it is incredibly joyous. And one which also has no intention of wasting seconds - From the very starting second, with opener "Mogho Naba", we are dropped straight into the meat of things with a steady african-type beat that progressively increases in dimension with more and more robust instrumentation backing it up. The band wobbles, thrashes and dismantles its own grooves over and over in the blink of an eye but they never miss a single step. Its groove is exactly the kind of stop-and-start rhythm I've always wished funk had more of - It's not the just the band increasing its density, the groove itself always feels like it's moving, like it's growing into its own being, and slowly but surely drags you into it. And the band's tag as "Spiritual Jazz" is no joke - The band members themselves can be heard wailing with a level of investment that almost approaches ecstacy. All of them yelp, groan and scream their hearts out and follow each and everyone of those grooves laid by the instruments with a wide smile and never objecting. All of the band members vocal or otherwise find perfect harmony and sustain and improve each other so well it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that momentarily, they all became one single entity, one single mind. And merely a few minutes before the song's conclusion, they begin to dissolve - Taking directly from the free jazz, the band fully deconstructs the beat and makes it almost completely impossible to identify before delluding into a brief free jam that finally releases with the band returning to the funk. With only 9 minutes,
The Pyramids make their overall statement clear - This is deeply spiritual music of the highest order and of unmatched splendor, trapped in its own little world and giving itself completely to the music and the ecstacy of the dance.
From the opener and on, the overall thematic does not change too much, but the jams remain incredibly solid through out. "Queen Of The Spirits" (divided into three separate tracks in some versions) immediately picks up on the same rhythm laid by the opener but reduces some of the tension and instead makes it slightly more hypnotic. At least, at the start; It doesn't take long before the band begins to up the flame. It's on this track as well where some of the more traditional elements of jazz begin to show as particular focus is placed on the solos, my favorite one being the very first one performed with flute and rides the rhythm gracefully and swiftly, and which covers the entire first part for the versions with "Queen of The Spirits" devided into multiple tracks. Stopping the album from becoming tedious, the band isn't afraid to shift its gears suddenly, first demonstrated by the second and third part of "Queen..." where the big band grooves are suddenly halted and focus is placed on the purely african percussion.
Perhaps, however, this is best showcased in what's arguably the jewel of the record, "Nsorama (The Stars)". In it, we find the band at its most hypnotic yet - The anxious playing from the rhythm section feel purposefully restraint, as if holding back a release that they only tease you with, and instead place further focus on the chanting and the tauted "Spiritual" aspect of the record hits at its hardest. And this is also where the band best showcases their clever songwriting, finely turning the entire record right on its feet by slowly building up all of its harmonic instruments into a cacophonous improvised jam, perplexingly held together by what was previously the wildest feature of them all, the rhythm section. Thanks to this section's talent, the band is glued together in a beautiful way that fully stops the recording from becoming overly messy. While the track never quite reaches the highest level of all out of intensity and fury that it seems like it could, it never feels like it wastes its own potential; Everything feels planned, planned into making you think it can do more but then leave you begin for more of the infectious rhythms, and in that aspect, they succeeded quite well. Finally, the record concludes with its most mellow track, "My Africa" - A fairly standard tune (For this record) finds the band slowly dissolving, chanting and wailing lowly in a way that feels pure and welcoming, and lightly drifting away into thin air.
There's something just so
liberating to me about this record, too - It's hard to explain, but something feels so emotionally fulfilling whenever I listen to this record that goes beyond leaving me with a satisfied listening experience. It feels like a solemn journey, a beautiful trip through the murkiest areas of the soul and the body that leaves me completely awe-struck whenever the record finishes to the point that nearly anything else I put on a few minutes later feels inferior and unfulfilling. It's a connection that I rarely find with a record, but in this case there is no doubt to me that
King of Kings is a special record, one which I find difficult to understand why anyone even vaguely interested in jazz wouldn't find at least some sort of enjoyment out of. Perhaps there are some things I'm not meant to understand, given that the band would never go on to find much success outside of their homeland Africa, and unfortunately went away forgotten by far too many. Don't be one of them; Find this record however you can, put it on, and lose yourself to the dance and spirituality.
