Nothing to Declare

Released

700 Bliss is one of Moor Mother’s more fun projects, a collaboration with DJ Haram that sidesteps the overtly political rage of Irreversible Entanglements and most of her solo work in favor of braggadocio laid over skittering, hypnotic laptop tracks that owe as much to strip-club bass as Chicago footwork. On “Anthology,” the chorus is literally “I feel like dancing,” and there’s a hilarious skit, “Easyjet,” on which Moor Mother and DJ Haram play two other women critiquing their art — “I mean, come on, is this even music?” The music squelches and crackles, with much less of the excoriating synth noise of her other projects and a lot more subwoofer-friendly boom. Watch out for Alli Logout’s manic guest appearance on “Capitol.”

Phil Freeman

Philly-based rapper-slash-poet Moor Mother thrives in every musical context she’s tried so far, exorcising trauma through the means of avant hip-hop (solo and alongside the likes of billy woods, cf. Brass), free jazz (the ensemble Irreversible Entanglements), experimental noise (Black Quantum Fututirsm) — and, inevitably in the club-minded early ’20s, dance music. But her pairing with DJ Haram isn’t quite so cut-and-dry: while the rock-the-bell hooks on Nothing to Declare can nod all the way back to ’80s-vintage drag ballrooms and classic house (“Nightflame” especially), it’s when they compress 21st century machine-beat history into a noisy surveillance-era assault on post-colonial cruelty that the beat hits heaviest. Haram finds early-Wiley iciness beneath hyperpop’s surface (“Totally Spies”), strips The Money Store of its extraneous debris to let the beat breathe down your neck (“Bless Grips”), and foregrounds panic-glitch beats and serrated bass that’s built to destroy (“Candace Parker”). And though Moor Mother’s voice is subject to countless distortions and mutation, her terse, defiant power as a lyricist and performer has rarely felt more upfront and (title notwithstanding) declarative in its defiance.

Nate Patrin

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