SUMAC & Moor Mother THE FILM

Moor Mother (a.k.a. Camae Ayewa) is no stranger to an unsettling backdrop. A righteous figure, one whose pen and prose are commanding enough to suck distraction away, Moor Mother’s authoritative voice and sharply authored observations seem to thrive before the ensemble-built stress of tumultuous improvisation, her band Irreversible Entanglements (not to mention the performances tied to her own solo work) often layering wild, scribbling brass and percussive freak-outs, cultivating pure discordance and provocation that are impossible to ignore.

SUMAC, the post-metal improv behemoth composed of Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists), Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch) and Aaron Turner (Mamiffer, ISIS), are known to color outside the proverbial (and reverb-ial™) lines while ruining an eardrum or two. Colossal and chaotic, not to mention muck-drenched and lengthy, SUMAC’s rattling and radiating explorations tend to be immersive, metal’s answer to free form or spiritual jazz.

This partnership made perfect sense.

THE FILM, released earlier this year via Thrill Jockey Records, is a SUMAC / Moor Mother collaboration, each track built out as “scenes” (or interludes) to push the notion that what you’re listening to is a narrative work. To add, the music, written, performed, and recorded for this album, is dubbed a fully-realized “score.”

In 2024, both SUMAC and Moor Mother issued finished projects: SUMAC’s The Healer was an immersive and gratifying four-song trip and an apparent cap on a trilogy of LPs (2018’s Love In Shadow and 2020’s May You Be Held); Ayewa’s crosshairs were affixed to British colonialism on the more electronic The Great Bailout, a litany of sins detailed with haunting fervor, as if reopening an historic cold case so accountability could be finally taken by the culprits for whom time has forgiven. Later that July, SUMAC released The Keeper’s Tongue, a two-song EP featuring Healer remixes, one of which was handled by Ayewa for the song World Of Light.

Like those albums, THE FILM is a showcase of intensity: SUMAC ably matches that of Irreversible Entanglements via alternate delivery, while Ayewa’s passion and spoken outbursts meet Aaron Turner’s guttural howl. Looking at the essence of both entities and their respective creative signatures, it’s somehow both remarkable and obvious how natural each of them sound together on this LP.

With a low pitch effect on Ayewa’s vocal, violent shocks of droning guitar sound radiating behind her, Scene 1 acts intro to the album. “All they know is hate / Hate ’til they OD,” she declares. “And all they do is kill / They don't want us to breathe.” As the maelstrom of sounds builds, Ayewa’s intensity grows, her words are repeated with greater passion, her vocals transcending the veritable hell being emitted by the instruments. This performance is evocative of Julian Cope’s pairing with sunn O))) for their White 1 LP, the track My Wall, a near 30-minute poem recited over and competing with an enveloping dome of reverberating sound.

The following track, Scene 2: The Run, is one the album’s best offerings. Starting with a crunchy bass chug, which guides the song at moments throughout its runtime and eventually acts as its bookends, SUMAC very patiently builds considerable momentum and eventually shifts the track into riff-charged, percussion-laden aggression. Ayewa and Turner both share vocal duties, each of them given their own parts of the song. Following the interlude Hard Truth, which features ethereal vocal work from singer Candice Hoyes, singer Kyle Kidd introduces Scene 3, the band’s composed and consistent musical theme at times acting as punctuation for Ayewa’s stanzas. “We all had dreams,” she states. “We all had dreams to get to the cream / Paycheck to paycheck / We all had schemes / Get rich or die trying…” For Scene 4, the singer Sovei adds melodic backup to Ayewa’s words, eerie sounds and periodic intervention from SUMAC breaking up its otherwise minimal design.

Camera is the album’s oddest inclusion and, arguably, its most intense. A talking head, unnatural in speech, begins the track by monotonously introducing itself to an assumed listenership:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be very glad to tell my story. I am a smart fellow as I have a very fine frame of 48 electrical relays. It works just like a telephone switchboard. If I get a wrong number, I can always blame the operator.”

Harsh drum fills and sonic conflict follows, indecipherable spoken samples and news clips spliced into the jarring uproar as Ayewa launches into desperate repeated pleas: “Get away! Get away! Get away!” A bit past the four-minute mark, the air settles, allowing enough space for a fragment of the otherwise buried dialogue to be heard clearly: “There’s nothing funny about the tools of capitalism.” Over a throbbing bass string and some busy DNA-evocative six-string friction, Ayewa, again with the low-pitch effect, “Let the camera do the talking / open-air funeral / don’t look away / don’t look away / don’t look away… I. Don’t. Know. What. Else. To. Write.” The environs sinister, the outlook bleak, the random guitar strings choppy and charred, a palpable restlessness… this track is an indictment and a beatdown. The Truth Is Out There others less than 90 seconds of ethereal respite before the album finishes with Scene 5: Breathing Fire.

Clocking in at a little longer than 16 and a half minutes, Scene 5: Breathing Fire, rife with sludge and drag, is a leveling, multi-act treatise to motion and commotion: “Seems like every time there’s a bomb, there’s a round of applause!” With one last opportunity for counsel, observation, and accusation, Ayewa’s most impassioned stanzas meet SUMAC’s cultivated doom with gratifying results and a powerful midpoint that necessitates the track’s eventual comedown. As if running down her last few weeks’ worth of listens, Ayewa makes a number of references to A Tribe Called Quest (“… midnight marauders…”), GZA / Genius (“…basic instructions before leaving Earth…” [B.I.B.L.E.]), Rancid / Jim Carroll (“… and, out come the wolves…”), and Operation Ivy (“Take warning!” and “There’s a freeze up! Coming!”), ably sampling hip hop and punk rock phrases and lyrics into her prose and eloquently expressed rage. By the last few minutes, Ayewa’s voice is down to a whisper, only a few strings plucked as the last couple minutes of the song elapse.

This is perhaps where the end credits would’ve begun to roll, though I can’t begin to comprehend the sort of lists Ayewa would have in mind—and I wouldn’t presume to guess on her behalf. What I can say, based on the damning tone and frenzied disposition of this LP, the want for peace and justice, is what informs Ayewa’s passion. Whoever this album is intended to defend, the credits belong to them.