Freedom Fables is the third long-player by London-based world groove fusion outfit
Nubiyan Twist. On their self-titled 2015 debut, the band used singers and rappers like tonal elements in their harmonic palette, combining modal jazz with hip-hop, soul, funk, electronics, and Pan-African rhythms. Their dancefloor-quaking groove jumble registered across the U.K. and Europe. On 2019's Jungle Run, singers and rappers acted as guideposts for listeners in an oft-shifting, sophisticated musical landscape. On Freedom Fables, the role of the vocalist is primary. The band's eight instrumentalists serve both songs and singers with a propulsive polyrhythmic approach and kaleidoscopic harmonic palette that encompasses a rainbow of tones, colors, and textures.
U.K. neo-soul chanteuse Ria Moran fronts
Nubiyan Twist for the scene-setting "Morning Light." Atop a bumping, jazz-hop bass line, cooing horns, and drifting electronics, Moran's singing is silky smooth and deeply expressive. She invites the horns to embrace her sunny, optimistic lyric with resolve -- and they do. "Tittle Tattle" features current frontwoman Cherise Adams-Burnett. She glides, sasses, exhorts, and warns as horns charge headlong at multi-layered organic and synthetic percussion and keyboards, while guitarist Tom Excell's spiky funk vamps propel the groove. Ghanaian legend Pat Thomas guests on the cautionary "Ma Wonka," a cooking meld of Afrobeat and soukous rhythms woven through dub effects. His sweet vocal offers a moral warning of the danger posed by gossip, and his singing contrasts with the band's darkly tinged, urgent groove underscored in Jonny Enser's biting trumpet break. MC and alto saxophonist
Soweto Kinch not only raps but sings his best
Marvin Gaye impression on the breezy "Buckle Up." The steady handclaps riffle up under a steamy, sexy groove, as he asserts the lyric's truth, then caps it with a knotty alto solo. Ghanaian superstar
K.O.G. guests on the incendiary "If I Know," wedding modal and Latin jazz and South American cumbia to scorching Afro-funk rhythms and highlife guitars. Cherise returns on "Keeper," an angular meld of syncopated post-bop, neo-electro, and pulsing horns as Excell bridges band and singer with melodic interplay. She also delivers the vocal in finger-popping neo-soul highlight "Flow," soaring and scatting in a crystalline mezzo-soprano atop cascading neo-electro keyboards, swinging horns, and a dubby funk bass line. South London's
Ego Ella May walks a tightrope between the mercurial worlds of neo-soul and jazz in "24-7." The band's tempos and harmonic palettes change, but she holds the reins, controlling the tune's dynamic while expressively urging on canny instrumental interplay. Closer "Wipe Away Tears" commences with double-timed snare and hi-hat as electric piano, flute, and horns engage in sweeping call-and-response. Amid this expansive progressive jazz chart, saxman
Nick Richards delivers a sublime, sweet, resonant vocal, calling the instruments to him to create an anthem of affirmation and transcendence. As a whole, Freedom Fables is a beautifully integrated, physical approach to song and narrative; it's a musical adventure as substantive structurally as it is enjoyable viscerally. ~ Thom Jurek