AS IS, featuring Al & Stacey Schulman: Crazy World

What does it take to turn a romantic Cole Porter song into a powerful nine-minute protest piece? The band AS IS teases it out with a bit of a false trail to begin with: a tasty little scat intro, nicely-arranged. You might not suspect. Stacey Schulman brings the head in with a slight tweak to the lyric ("From this moment on, we can see clear: only truth can fight fear...").

Jeff Tain Watts launches what becomes a shipload of hydrodynamic pressure with his splashing, driving drums, while Corcoran Holt generates the kind of forward force field that causes orbital motions to erupt spontaneously around his bass, which Christylez Bacon pumps up with his beatbox. Dante Pope turns on some flashing lights with his vocalese harmonizations and interjections. Al Schulman's guitar kicks things momentarily into jazz solo-land before Stacey comes back in to finish up the verse, engaging the muscular upper end of her belt voice.

As she holds the last note of the head the texture loosens and opens, allowing the freestyle genius Kokayi to enter with some poetic plain talk: "From this point here, we can choose to be blind as justice but trust this: Should all be a light clear that the hate that hate produced leaves trees and roots that bear fruit..." After a couple more minutes of exhilarating exhortations, delivered in his unique brand of sprechstimme, he breaks into a call-and-response worth remembering for the next marching protest: "From (from) this (this) moment (moment) on (on), we (we) need (need) to love (more) more (love)," which concludes with a pithy summary: "We need to wake up and we need to definitely say it more."

Fair enough: From this moment on we need more love.

PS: If you love physical product, the album Crazy World will not disappoint. All the lyrics are there in a glossy brochure, with full information on personnel for each track, pictures, liner notes, all the fine print.