Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes is the new album by Philadelphia-based artist, poet, and musician, Camae Ayewa, who performs under the name Moor Mother.
It was hard to embrace a 2016 that gave us both Moor Mother’s debut album, Fetish Bones, and the Trump administration. Yet, even then, it was clear that the political, social, and artistic landscape would be haunted by the spectre of Ayewa’s work. Since then, the landscape has morphed yet again, this time into something fiercely ugly. Afrofuturism caught fire and torched the planet. Moor Mother -- heiress to the afro-cyber-digi-punk creative spark of a city that has been home to both Sun Ra and MOVE -- has since traveled the globe, spreading her decades-long harvested brand of techno-gospel.
As a being of light and ritual in a forever darkening world, Moor Mother brings us Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, the culmination of all of her earthly experiences merged with all of her cosmic ones.
A black hole is ‘black’ because nothing can escape it, not even light. A sonic black hole is fluid moving so fast that it traps sound -- a perfect metaphor for the feeling of struggle against an unjust system. Analog fluids are the workers within the darkness of these black holes -- individuals who strive to make things work in the face of cosmic pressures.
On Analog Fluids, haunting slave narratives are presented as dystopian allegory and negro spirituals are flipped, remixed, and recaptured, only to be digitised into a symbiotic bio-morph program for the post-thumb drive age. It’s a record rich with the noise and chaos that affirm Moor Mother’s punk roots, yet it is also anchored in earthiness via the constant injection of Black ritual, poetry, and drums programmed to vibrate through the listener’s mitochondria.
The record is also a testament to Moor Mother’s much expanded community -- with collaborators that include Philly rap icon Reef the Lost Cause as well as philosopher and scion, Saul Williams. Production assists are delivered via Justin Broadrick (Zonal, Godflesh), King Britt, Mental Jewelry, Giant Swan, and JayVe Montgomery.
Shimmering in sinister sentience, Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, is the perfect synthesis of Moor Mother’s unique artistic approach and the Black revolution at large. Myth, Black mothers, vodun, quantum futurism, and post-colonial street narratives all get their moments to shine. In 2019, only a conjurer like Moor Mother can bring all those pieces together as a cohesive, powerful whole. The records accompaniment is a book of poetry featuring more of Ayewa’s writings titled Analog Fluids.
Since the release of Fetish Bones in 2016, Moor Mother has toured throughout the world and has performed live with Nicole Mitchell, Art Ensemble of Chicago, The Bug and Justin Broadrick, to name a few. As a visual and soundscape artist, her work has been presented at The Kitchen NYC, Metropolitan Museum of Art Chicago, Guggenheim, and the Hirshhorn Gallery. She is the co-founder of Rockers! Philly, an event series and festival focused on marginalised artists, and Black Quantum Futurism Collective, a literary and artistic collaboration with Rasheedah Phillips. In addition to her solo work as Moor Mother, Ayewa is also a vocalist and collaborator in the groups Irreversible Entanglements, 700 Bliss (with DJ Haram), Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Moor/Jewelry (with Mental Jewelry).
