TruGROID Records proudly presents : “Black Sex Yall Liberation & Bloody Random Violets”

Tru­GROID Records proudly presents Burnt Sugar’s brand new dou­ble CD “Black Sex Yall Lib­er­a­tion & Bloody Ran­dom Vio­lets”– their most diverse and opu­lent record­ing to date. Rep­re­sent­ing their sixth stu­dio record­ing in four years, the col­lec­tion fea­tures key con­tri­bu­tions from Ver­non Reid, Vijay Iyer, Butch Mor­ris, Pete Cosey, Tamar Kali, DJ Muta­mas­sik, Omega Moon and Kirk Dou­glass of The Roots.

Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer Jared Michael Nick­er­son
Con­duc­tion and Pro­duc­tion By Greg Tate

Under the cre­ative direc­tion of con­duc­tor Greg Tate, Burnt Sugar has evolved, in less than five years, from a mid­night jam ses­sion between friends at CBGBs into an inter­na­tion­ally renowned per­form­ing and record­ing ensem­ble with six releases.

Made up of some of the most vir­tu­osic, adven­tur­ous and inno­v­a­tive tal­ent on the cur­rent New York scene, Burnt Sugar has pro­voked crit­ics to some of the most rap­tur­ous and poetic praise seen in recent times.

With the release of “Black­sex Yall Lib­er­a­tion & Bloody Ran­dom Vio­lets”, Burnt Sugar is set to fur­ther prod fans and com­men­ta­tors to new heights of metaphoric ecstasy. Work­ing with more writ­ten and arranged mate­r­ial than on past efforts; the group reveals its awe-inspiring range as impro­vis­ers, com­posers, con­cep­tu­al­ists, social crit­ics and groove merchants.

The album opener; “Funky Rich Med­ina” is a trib­ute to the esteemed DJ of the same name who Tate became a quick fan of at the leg­endary ‘Fela’ par­ties Med­ina spun for in con­nec­tion with cura­tor Trevor Schoonmaker’s Black Pres­i­dent exhi­bi­tion.
The track fea­tures the slash­ingly rhyth­mic cut­ting and scratch­ing of DJ Muta­mas­sik and the jazz gypsy vio­lin aer­o­bat­ics of Mazz Swift. Flautist Satch Hoyt, who lends a very Rah­saan Roland Kirk inspired solo to the pro­ceed­ings also hap­pens to be a crit­i­cally acclaimed visual artist in the ‘Black Pres­i­dent’ show.

“Fear”, writ­ten by gui­tarist Rene Akan, has haunt­ing lyrics co-written by full-throated vocal­ists Lisala Beatty and Jus­tice Dilla-X. The tune trades off rhythm and blues bal­ladry and punk rave-up. The tenor sax­o­phone work of Petre Radu-Scafaru, erot­i­cally when not skro­nk­ingly mul­ti­phonic, nas­tily embosses the track’s lus­cious blend of frenzy and release. Justice’s clamor to know whether the pow­ers that be con­sider him a threat are only vaguely answered by his epiphany “I am a dark­cloud liv­ing in America”.

Two of the album’s com­po­si­tions come from Black music mas­ters Miles Davis and Max Roach: “Mtume” comes from the late dark magus’ “Get Up With It”. It became a favorite of Tate’s when he saw Davis elec­tric band per­form over a week­long stay in Wash­ing­ton DC in 1974 at the long defunct Etcetera club. Sax­o­phon­ist Radu-Scafaru and trum­peter Lewis Flip Barnes evoke the spacey ambi­ence of Joe Hen­der­son and Eddie Henderson’s acoustic-electric record­ings of the 70s. The word­less vocals of Dilla-X and Beatty and the siren gui­tar of Rene Akan pro­vide a stun­ning fairy dance.
The albums other ‘cover tune’ is “Driva Man/Freedom Day” a suite com­posed by Max Roach/Abby Lin­coln and arranged for the band by Liv­ing Colour gui­tarist Ver­non Reid. A first take, no-overdub won­der it pays homage to the swing of 50s bop and to jazz’s future by way of Micah Gaugh’s EFX rid­den alto sax­o­phone and the hyper­ki­netic live elec­tronic drum­ming of Mar­que Gilmore, highly regarded as the man who took drum and bass rhythms beyond the DJ booth and into the mod­ern drum­mers hands.

Disc One ends with “Muta’s Rites” a remix of mate­r­ial from Burnt Sugar’s pre­vi­ous record­ing “The Rites” (which fea­tured leg­endary 70s Miles and Elec­tric Mud gui­tarist Pete Cosey bassist Melvin Gibbs and a 15 mem­ber ensem­ble under the con­duc­tion of Tate’s baton-mentor, Butch Mor­ris) by DJ Muta­mas­sik who pre­pared this ‘ver­sion’ on her KAOS pad.

The double-set’s sec­ond disc; “Nomadol­ogy” is largely given over to Tate’s “No Direc­tion Home, re: Muham­mad & Malvo”. It presents the composer’s attempt to reckon with the psy­ches of the two alleged DC snipers and the reign of ter­ror they are accused of per­pe­trat­ing in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area in the sum­mer of 2002. A thirty-minute suite bro­ken into ten tracks, the piece sears via the tor­ren­tial solos of vio­lin­ist Swift, sax­o­phon­ist Gaugh, DJ Muta­mas­sik and elec­tronic vocal­ist Latasha N. Nevada Diggs.

Diggs, who also per­forms with Ver­non Reid and DJ Logic’s “Yohimbe Broth­ers” project, puts her patented elec­tron­i­cally altered yodel­ing to spine-chilling use here, con­jur­ing up a shell-shocked por­trait of betrayed inno­cence and mis­di­rected faith. For Tate, Diggs’ per­for­mance, in com­bi­na­tion with Mutamassik’s provoca­tive scratches and sound­bites res­o­nantly reveals Black Sex’s hid­den con­cep­tual intent: “To obliquely and son­i­cally puz­zle over lofty abstrac­tions like rad­i­cal Beauty, rev­o­lu­tion­ary Desire, eso­teric Wis­dom and the zeit­geist in this age of state spon­sored ter­ror and medieval Chris­t­ian, Zion­ist and Islamic zealotry”
The sweep­ing sym­phonic lul­laby heard in the final sec­tion recalls both Alice Coltrane and Pub­lic Enemy.

“Moon­chile” is a rock and roll instru­men­tal Sun Ra might have approved of, espe­cially given the piano work of Vijay Iyer who seems intent on a bar­rel­house mar­riage of Lit­tle Richard, Cecil Tay­lor and Eddie Palmieri. The outer-dimensional gui­tar solo­ing of Mor­gan Craft, Kirk Dou­glas (now with The Roots) and Rene Akan also inten­sify the psy­che­delic vibe. The hal­lu­cino­genic and witchy rap­ping of MC Omega Moon com­pli­ments the gui­tarists’ fervor.

“Ven­tris”, a song orig­i­nally writ­ten by Tate and Tamar-Kali in trib­ute to var­i­ous African god­desses, here gets an impres­sion­is­tic ren­der­ing full of thun­der, light­ning and rain cour­tesy of pianist Iyer and vio­lin­ist Swift.

Clos­ing out the disc is “The Rites Redux”, an alter­nate ver­sion of a track first heard on their pre­vi­ous album “The Rites”. Some­what darker than the ver­sion heard on that album, ‘Rites’ points to the Wag­ner­ian sturm un drang Burnt Sugar and Butch Mor­ris have wrenched from the Stravin­sky source mate­r­ial in live performance.

Burnt Sugar plans to sup­port the release of ‘Black Sex’ with exten­sive tour­ing in the States and Europe in early 2004.