Rebellum

Rebellum is a rene­gade splin­ter cell hacked from the recom­bi­nant cor­pus of Burnt Sugar Arkestra, Melvin Van Pee­bles’ wid­Lax­a­tive and Funk­Face. The group’s debut album was com­posed and pro­duced this past sum­mer by BS maven Greg Tate, FF Lord Luq­man Brown, and Sugar Lax­a­tive straw­boss Jared Michael Nick­er­son, in the Harlem stu­dios of Bud­dhaBug Records.

File under Avant-Agit-Pop. The 17 tunes on Rebellum's debut album The Dark­nuss bleed a bloody pro­fu­sion of exotic elements–warped soul har­monies, free­dom swing horn play, mag­got brained gui­tar bursts and orches­tral loopadelics. The spir­its of Sun Ra, Ron Hardy, Eddie Hazel, Gary Numan and The Emo­tions all appear to be wel­come here.

The Dark­nuss is an album of snarky protest songs, wry race music and roman­tic war­rior anthems. Rebellum's song titles loudly-proudly rep­re­sent the rant­ing swoon of their Afro-Futurist insurgency:”No Coloureds Allowed”, “Start Think­ing like An African”, “The Dark­nuss”, “Rock Star Amne­siac”, “Chains And Water”, “Who’s Lov­ing You Now?”, “There Is A God (The Sin­gu­lar­ity)” and “Young Frankenstank”.

Grip­ping the sum of Rebellum's parts demands one appre­hends these fac­tions: The three part super fly vocal front­line of Mikel Banks, Shel­ley Nicole and Lisala and those ace rid­dim sec­tion com­pan­eras, The Buck­eye Bass Mack Jared Michael Nick­er­son and Straight-Up Cave Girl drum­mer, LaFrae Sci, not to men­tion Long Island Gui­tar Hero, Andre Las­salle, Tenor Sax­o­phone G-force, V. Jef­frey Smith, Psy­chotronic Bari-Sax Queen, “Moist” Paula Hen­der­son and The Key­board Lib­er­a­tor, Leon Gruenbaum.

Tags