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Untitled (Rise)

For the almost-completely out-of-touch, end-of-year best-of lists can be useful and instructive. Having stuck my head in the musical sand in the Spring of 2020, I'd missed the advent of Sault's two Untitled albums until I saw enthusiastic praise for them that December. After trying on a few tracks for size, I ordered CD copies of them both (from Juno, as I recall) in January last year,

It hadn't been long since I'd first seen the name "Inflo": in the credits for Michael Kiwanuka's eponymous 2019 album. Impressive as that record was, it's as captain of the good ship SAULT that his vision & talent have truly come into their own. Untitled (Rise) can seem an uplifting carnivalesque counterpart to the oftener mournful & angry Untitled (Black Is) - but that's an oversimplification, as they're meanwhile cut from different parts of the same cloth.

Even a dance music ignoramus like me can appreciate some of the strands skilfully interwoven here: disco, samba, '70s soul, African rhythms: those & more all yoked together into a strirringly coherent whole. I'm fondest of the opening half-dozen tracks, especially 'I Just Want to Dance' and 'Son Shine' but there are plenty of other pleasures throughout.

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