backxwash: Only Dust Remains – Album Review

backxwash: Only Dust Remains                                          

Ugly Hag Records/Self-Released

Stream | Download

Out Now

Award winning Zambian-Canadian hip-hop artist and all-round polymath quietly releases one of the albums of this or any other year, an up to date report on where we currently find ourselves, a soundtrack in apocalypse for the impending new decline and a world-class modern hip-hop album. MK Bennett dances into the fire.

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.”
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin.

The music of backxwash, formerly known as Ashanti Mutinta and of Zambian descent, reflects and refracts untold years of pain. It is not merely a commentary on the current situation brought about by Colonialism and Post-Colonialism but a living, breathing shadow of those lived experiences, utilising classic rock and spoken word samples. It is a phenomenally clever idea that, without seeming calculation, immediately opens up an audience to the knowledge, the itch that recognises itself, that old song becoming new, a metamorphosis of sound into new context. At the very least, this reframing of the oppressor’s culture symbolises positive thought, righteously and beautifully expressed in its anger. It is a transgressive reading of the trans body politic that you can dance to.

Backxwash’s previous albums, a trilogy of deep thought and brilliant aesthetics, of pointed and magnificent titles, also acted as both a wake and a remembrance of things past, a reckoning with her personal history and, by extension, the echoed history we forever repeat. Conscious musical and cultural reference points bounce off each other, easter eggs and well-timed grenades, designed to be noticed. She bears the weight of history on her shoulders with admirable grace, but the ghosts of the past will rattle their chains regardless, and so she sings their song too.

Black Lazarus, the first track, begins and maintains a resigned anger. In contrast, the backing track is a throat-catching sample or original of stunned beauty that simultaneously stops you in your tracks and hurts your heart, a churchified and haunted thing that initially starts singularly but builds to a layered masterpiece of high emotion, eventually sitting somewhere between Kendrick and King, Doctor via Danny Brown. At the same time, Backxwash relates a tale of disconnection, religious and personal, a necessary brick wall to keep one’s sanity intact but fully aware that prices need to be paid. This is mercurial, a perfect modern hip-hop song with criteria met and all possible avenues open, and the possibility that the rest can match this is so implausible and yet, and yet..Wake Up uses the old Dilla trick of using a vocal sample as a rhythm and backing track before the 80s drums come crashing in, all snap and bite and determination, while the words tell of public and self-sacrifice, the song’s weighted bottom end emphasised by big piano chords and slab-like bass while the narrative, streaked with blood, tries to explain calmly and evidentially. A seven-verse lyrical masterclass with authentic church rock backing. Song of the year.

Undesirable is a breath, but still a high water mark, a full 90 seconds before the drums come in, there is an arpeggiated, almost shoegaze backing, all warm keyboards and plucked strings, before the self-explanatory vocal starts. This is the album settling and getting comfortable with how it tells its story, unique and uncompromising. 9Th Gate begins with a backward-masked mix of emotive chords and serves as an intro to 9th Heaven, an upbeat treatise on biblical rapture and an attempt to find it, to reach it and the price of that knowledge. Redemptive and soulful, with a stunning backing track, part onomatopoeic gospel, part South London drum and bass, it’s another piece of work, another work of art.

The references to Kendrick and Danny Brown are not mere or superficial similarities but rather highlight the brilliance of Backxwash in her full splendour. While Kendrick’s genius lies in his ability to transform the personal into the universal turning, for instance, the loss of a parent into something we can all empathise with or at least sing about in a circle- Backxwash’s wide-eyed wonder lies in her capacity to articulate specific aspects of her existence: her upbringing, her religion and its severe restrictions, and the feeling of being an extreme outsider, whether geographically or socially, never government-approved. Thematically akin in musical tone to both Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition and Kendrick’s Damn, and equal to both, Backxwash appears as a cypher, a conduit for understanding this pain, a Matrix-level reclamation of bodily autonomy set to self-produced beats of several levels of meaning.

Dissociation kicks like a mule, forty acres or not; huge drums sit on a post-punk keyboard line that fades to grey, the lyrics seem to be about addiction, the good and the bad of it, and Chloe Hotline drops a mournful vocodered chorus right in there while the rhythm relaxes, yet the verses continue to escalate, only to return to the wash of synthetic noise again, as the music reflects the lyrical state once more. History Of Violence begins with an urgent and discordant riff, matching the content, a state of the current union address and a notice in the sand of just where we are. It builds again beautifully, strings joining the drums and statement pianos as she reaches for the heavens, and then the drums break like a dam, and we are released, until the next peak.

There is as much a clear link between this and The Manic Street Preachers Holy Bible or Lou Reeds Berlin, both serious musical works of art. Thematic crossover of American imperialism and body dysmorphia collide, though the Manics seems more reportage, it does not lose its strength or meaning. Backxwash lives inside her trauma and offers a different view, which makes it more difficult to look at but equally difficult to ignore, thankfully.

Stairway To Heaven, a less subtle nod to classic rock in the title at least, is an elegiac and moving narrative, seemingly a memory relived through a broken heart, emotions heightened as those big bass notes crash down through the shards of treble, as a guitar solo bravely attempts to follow the story through the nighttime heat haze. Think of this whole thing as a conceptual journey as we near the end, and the lights flicker, as Love And Death, with its serious Russian playwright title and sampled dialogue and “The question of love is the question of what to do” interlude appears, a precursor to the title track itself.

Only Dust Remains is an appropriate finale, almost modern R&B but with layer upon layer of double meaning, including a sample of Queen Nina Simone, it eventually descends stunningly back into the gospel it started with as the drums fade, and the anger fades a little too, after albums worth of justified, righteous indignation. She may be finding a little much needed redemption, but her targets will remain solid, those constants of monolithic colonialism, state and church, church and state.

Some things you have to sit with, some things remain in constant motion.

A record in every sense of the word, with a perfect aesthetic running from album covers to logos to merchandise, this should expand far beyond and out into the culture, but if not, it still stands as something to celebrate and not see into the grey. She reminds us of ubuntu, that South African idea of humanitarianism, a collectivism of spirit, humanity in relation to others and the other. This impervious art is a call to arms before the inevitable reckoning, a reminder that no matter what – Ndiri nekuti tiri – I am because we are.

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

backxwash’s Instagram | Facebook | Website | Bandcamp

All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram