Sun City Girls: Space Prophet Dogon

Some time a while back--okay, maybe a long while back--I stumbled across what I thought was a sonic similarity between too seemingly disparate acts--Sun City Girls and Doseone's project, Subtle. So I spent part of today trying to locate the tracks that suggested this comparison and couldn't find them.

Somewhere in all of this was the seed of a post mentioning the fact that Dax Pierson of Subtle was injured near my home town, Atlantic, Iowa, a few years ago. Why does that matter? I don't know, except thew thought of an African-American experimental hiphop musician being treating for serious spinal injuries in the dead of winter in my hometown hospital says something bleak and true about our country. And he lived and is still making music, and that also says something bleak and true to me.

Anyhow, what I did find was this little gem off of Sun City Girls' Torch of the Mystics. Like a lot of American stuff I like, it's dramas seem private but not perverse, and the stakes feel real. Like Pere Ubu, they're another band that I don't know as well as I probably "should." I got into this particular album, as happens to me a lot, well after it was released, in this case because of an interview I saw with members of Pavement (this was in maybe '95 or '96) where each listed 10 or so of his favorite or most influential albums. Can't remember whose list this was on, but it was several years after the interview that I finally got this.

Oh, members of SCG are also responsible for one of the best, toughest "world music" labels out there, Sublime Frequencies. Man, I should put some of the Iraqi stuff up here next. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, enjoy the track. To me it sounds like majesty.