Hieroglyphic Being – The Red Notes 2LP Soul Jazz Records

Stunning new album from Chicago’s finest electronic futurist Hieroglyphic Being, aka Jamal Moss, newly released on Soul Jazz Records. This is his third album for the label, following on from The Acid Documents (2015), and African With Mainframes (w/ Noleian Reusse) K.M.T. (2016).

Born and based in Chicago, Moss’s music embodies two of the cultural foundation blocks of the city’s musical lineage; that of Chicago’s original Acid House sound (c. 1986) – Frankie Knuckles, Phuture, Marshall Jefferson et al, alongside a rigorous experimental sound searching that taps into the cosmic musical lineage of pioneering artist Sun Ra whose Arkestra landed and was based in the city from 1946-61, and the equally pioneering work of The Art Ensemble of Chicago in the 1960s and 70s.

‘Outsider House’ ‘Afro-Futurist’ ‘Rhythmic Cubism’, Moss’s near indescribable sound plays testament to the notion that he is perhaps the last of the line of producers directly influenced by Ron Hardy at the Music Box, uniquely qualified to write a new chapter of Chicago’s rich musical history.

Red Notes is the prolific artists new revelatory and unique project’ in his own words’ homage to the Blue Note Jazz sound of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock’ fused together with the classic Chicago House and Acid sensibilities of Larry Heard, Armando, Adonis et al, into a newly imagined futuristic and barrier-less musical landscape. 

Featuring organic and synthetic electronic instrumentation, Hieroglyphic Being here fuses real-time live instrumentation and over-dubbed technologies to dramatic effect, as analog and electronic worlds collide.