In the late ’70s, the R&B subgenre known as quiet storm gave us what I like to call “Sunday music.” Albums from Smokey Robinson (whose 1975 album The Quiet Storm inspired an intern at Washington, D.C., station WHUR-FM to coin the term), Anita Baker, and Luther Vandross produced soulful music to play in a restful house. Flowing across bright piano chords, silky percussion, and vocals that sound like they’re reverberating through wooden pews, the songs blanket their environment with waves of nostalgic calm that still vibrate with effusive yearning. When Brian Eno pioneered another sedate genre, ambient, with Ambient 1: Music for Airports in 1978, the effect was similar, but the tranquil style was meant to be so unobtrusive that it was only perceptible if you decided to think about it.
Since Space Afrika threaded outtakes of Black life through fuzzy loops on the 2020 mixtape hybtwibt?, the British duo has made sure its ambient music doesn’t pass by unnoticed. Six years later, their second album, Quiet Storm, is no less disruptive. It originally came into the world as the score for the Valentin Noujaïm-directed short film Opera Omnia, which follows two Black teenagers as they roam the night streets of Manchester; even without the film’s accompanying cityscapes, the music has more in common with quiet storm’s emphasis on introspective expression than Eno’s barely there compositions. The operatic vocal pads on “H00D Ambient” are too haunted, RKX Nephew’s dreams on “Ballad for a ‘G’” too big, the gun clicks on “Regards” too loud, to become sonic wallpaper.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Quiet Storm isn’t Space Afrika’s most accessible album; if you’re looking for the deep dub and warm trip-hop loops of earlier records, you might be searching for a while. What’s new here is the album’s heavy classical influence. Space Afrika bring in slow-moving and often gorgeous layers of double bass, violin, harp, saxophone, and piano to exhume the revelry, grief, and chaos of their inner worlds. The first voice you hear on the record is that of opera singer Axekke Fanyo, with a soprano that sounds like it could splinter the bowl of an expensive wine glass. The standout “From the Heart of Knowing” arrives early, where Alto Aria sings above a Bermuda Triangle of sorrow: the squeak of a saxophone, whining bass, and piano that plinks deliriously. The spirituality throughout is imbued with a solemn reverence more Catholic than Baptist.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
