A polyphonic poet, a monophonic monolith, an artist who will amuse, bemuse and bewitch. Jamal Moss is a musician who is always demanding, moving, shifting and reshaping his sound and self with this mix showing but a fraction of what The Sun God is all about.
Robbie can’t remember when he first got into Jamal Moss (aka Hieroglyphic Being, aka The Sun God, aka a heap of other monikers, pseudonyms and aliases), but he does remember being smacked in the face by his music. Drum laden tracks of daring and dynamic complexity. Ultra raw productions where instruments fly into distortions, basslines that bulge and flex before EQs spin like whirling tops, tracks that sing with sublime strings, works that howl with a guttural rage and beam with a shamanic spiritualism.
The Chicago musician was born and breed on the music of his city. Frequenting monuments like the Power Plant and Medusa’s, as well as being tutored by some of the pioneers of the sound like Adonis and Steve Pointdexter, Moss was raised on Gherkin Records and Traxx with a healthy diet of European imports. Over a twenty year career Moss has shattered the preconceptions of house and techno, obliterating genre tags as he puts a battering ram through barriers and walls before rebuilding compositions from the coarse and jagged debris.
Moss has remade himself from the rust and rubble of America’s decaying industrial towns, taking influence from the abandoned warehouses and the boarded up neighborhoods while finding hope in the possibilities of utilizing the past to realize a better future. His views are in one breath wide eyed and optimistic and in another sense brutally realistic and that juxtaposition permeates his attitude and music.
His mainstay is his Hieroglyphic Being nom de plume. Well represented in this hour long all vinyl mix put together by Robbie, under this alias Moss has featured on labels as diverse as Klang Elektronik, Planet Mu and Soul Jazz as well as his own Mathematics Recordings. The Chicago based artist has also collaborated with a number of like-minded knob twiddlers, working with Noleian Reusse as Africans With Mainframes and his old mentor Steve Pointdexter as Faces Drums.
Not only will you find relentless, punishing percussion in this mix, but also a tenderness. Moss is known for hammering his audience with a sonic barrage and Robbie has kept much of that rhythmic energy in his selection, he has also tried to show the subtle side of the Mathematics founder where playful whimsy, off-kilter wonkiness and outlandish experimentation abound.
A polyphonic poet, a monophonic monolith, an artist who will amuse, bemuse and bewitch. Jamal Moss is a musician who is always demanding, moving, shifting and reshaping his sound and self with this mix showing but a fraction of what The Sun God is all about. Enjoy. WE FORFEIT.
Tracklist ::
Prins Thomas :: D (Hieroglyphic Being Beat Rework) (Smalltown)
Hieroglyphic Being :: Free The Energy (No Vocal Energy) (Last Known Trajectory)
Faces Drums :: Pathways 2 Serenity (Mathematics Recordings)
Africans With Mainframes :: Pulse Of An African Land (Mathematics)
Africans With Mainframes :: The Joy Of Being (Mathematics)
Faces of Drums :: The Lost Tracks 6 (Mathematics)
Hieroglyphic Being :: Star Time (Technicolour)
The Sun God :: Spoken By The Spirits (Sequencias)
Africans With Mainframes :: RB-3 (Bio Rhythm)
Hieroglyphic Being :: A Synthetic Love Life (+ + +)
The Sun God :: Tower Of Ha (Bio Rhythm)
Hieroglyphic Being & The Configurative Or Modular Me Trio :: Azimuthal Equidistant (Mathematics)
I.B.M. :: Kill Bill (Interdimensional Transmissions)
Samples from the excellent Origins series by Resident Advisor:
Hieroglyphic Being Bandcamp | We Forfeit Facebook / Website / Mixcloud / Soundcloud
