Irreversible Entanglements’ third full-length album OPEN THE GATES is ethereal shards of jagged onyx, a melancholic exploration of the post-colonial debris that surrounds us. Let’s watch and listen, as this platter snakes through the sandy ashes of possible histories, dialogs with a nervous present, and asks to be birthed into a holographic new future. “Together in holy sound!” the band stitches patient anthems out of atmosphere. Pulling from a wider sonic vocabulary than on previous excursions, the agit-jazz found here is simultaneously pre- and post-apocalypse, as bass lurches in a tranced-out loop, horns are up in the track grooves like poltergeists playing in the streets, poetry cascades like a warrior call at a satsang, the drums both wild and refined pulse with uhuru-heart cadence. This is Irreversible Entanglements on new ground; same as the old ground.
And we need it now – the universe was awash in the sickly static veneer of anti-cosmos, of anti-nation; the halls were emptied, our shadows echoing and staining the walls of our abandoned oases – so we poured out into 2020’s wild streets. The ghosts of our labor danced around the sickness as we set fire to our old ways of thinking and moving, as we set fire to cop cars and bashed in the windows of our own rising disenfranchisement. “Open the gates!” we shouted, blessed be – we need it now!
Here come Irreversible Entanglements – Luke Stewart, the high priest on bass; Aquiles Navarro, the electric universe in human form on trumpet; Keir Neuringer, the cosmologist with the siren sound on sax; Tcheser Holmes, the griot, the myth-maker on drums; and Camae Ayewa, the Moor mother with an empyrean pen game – on this new disc with their fierce aural tectonics shifting the earth, their watery post-pangea as dirge, their punk rock ethos and crash and bang polyrhythmic super-sonic sound synesthesia in the form of OPEN THE GATES – here it comes, my Brothas and Sistas, here it comes.
1. Open the Gates
2. Keys to Creation
3. Lágrimas Del Mar
4. Storm Came Twice
5. Water Meditation
6. Six Sounds
7. The Port Remembers
Camae Ayewa - voice, synth
Keir Neuringer - saxophone, synth, percussion
Aquiles Navarro - trumpet, synth
Luke Stewart - double bass, bass guitar
Tcheser Holmes - drums, percussion
Recorded on January 5th, 2021, at Rittenhouse Soundworks, Philadelphia. Mixed in April, 2021, at International Anthem Studios, Chicago. Mastered in May, 2021, at Elysian Masters, Los Angeles.
Produced by: Camae Ayewa, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, Luke Stewart, and Tcheser Holmes.
Recorded by: Michael Richelle.
Mixed by: Dave Vettraino.
Mastered by: Dave Cooley.
Cover Photo by: Cyrus Moussavi.
Back Cover & Liner Photos by: Bob Sweeney.
Liner Notes by: Alex Smith.
Design & Layout by: Craig Hansen.
Executive Production by: Scott McNiece & David Allen
