by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
Collaborative albums happen for all sorts of reasons. An artist may want to jump at the chance to work with a musician whose work they love (see Madvillainy), or a formerly on-and-off partnership becomes formalized (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts). Sometimes, artists are keen to springboard off each other’s good graces (Watch the Throne), and more cynically, there are moments when a union feels like just a blatant attempt to cash in while the heat is on (looking at you, Danger Mouse).
And then, there are collaborations that make all the sense in the world. They feel so natural, it makes you wonder how it took so long for two acts to find each other. I mean, why Oxbow and Peter Brötzmann or No Trend and Lydia Lunch didn’t spend years making music together is beyond me.
Unequivocally, The Film falls into the latter category. A duet between atmospheric metal act Sumac, and poet, activist and sound collage artist Moor Mother, The Film is an easy alliance that deals with uneasy subject matter, an edict of a post-modern colonial pressure cooker in dense throbbing textures.
Both have cut collaborative LP’s before with tremendous results. Sumac have made a few albums of freely improvised havoc with revered Japanese experimentalist Keiji Haino, and in 2021, Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), recorded the woozily exhilarating Brass with billy woods, perhaps the most relevant hip-hop artist standing.
The Film continues that winning streak, binding Sumac’s viscous instrumentation and Moor Mother’s coiled, wiry delivery, creating something that is immaculately arranged without sounding overtly cerebral. The pairing announce their intent early, an abrasion of down-tuned guitars and Ayewa bluntly opening with “I want my breath back,” a sentence that carries both allegorical and, unfortunately, quite literal weight. From there, each step The Film takes feels like a cataclysm.
By “Scene 2,” the tension is wound to a snapping point. Ayewa’s libretti—which has always cut a middle line between abstract “intergalactic” musings and forthright paranoiac chants—splice into Sumac’s pulsing noise seamlessly. What you will take away from this album will change as you listen again and again, and The Film works just as well as a purely atavistic display and a deeper statement on the state of the world. You know that when Ayewa repeats “I was running,” it isn’t meant to be taken at face value, that it carries something far more tethered to inhuman earth, but it works on that primal level anyway. And then Aaron Turner’s otherworldly growl ratchets the piece into the stratosphere over an unforgiving bitter chord progression.
Negative space and a little room to breathe being the root of all good metal, some small moments of let-up do sneak their way into the album’s merciless march. “Hard Truth” and “The Truth is Out There” are short stylized pieces that hew closer to Moor Mother’s work in the industrial/sound art field, and “Scene 4” finds some solace in the beautiful vocalizing of Philly singer Sovei. Otherwise, The Film is left to paint its post-apocalyptic vision at shattering decibels. By the time closer “Scene 5” runs itself down in its ambient coda, and Ayewa offers the grimly hopeful “we keep surviving” as a kiss-off, you feel disoriented and lost, and a little deafened, and thankful these two vital acts found each other on this course of collusion.