Soul Jazz House | Deep House 3 Items

‘There is no Acid in this House’ is Hieroglyphic Being’s stunning third solo album on Soul Jazz Records, a resolute and powerful statement of Jamal Moss’s raw, vital, pioneering, Afro-Futurist electronic (dance) music.

On his new album Moss once-again draws upon the vast scope of experimentation that has defined Chicago’s musical universe over the last half a century – from the birth of house music with the pioneers Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others to the radical avant-garde jazz legacy of the city - The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra.

Chicago’s musical universe continues to push-further forward today with artists such as Hieroglyphic Being, Angel Bat Dawid, Makaya McCraven, and labels such as International Anthem label and Hieroglyphic Being’s own Mathematics, all continuing to explore radical new music while drawing upon the city’s decidedly Afro-futurist lineage.

Jamal Moss, aka Hieroglyphic Being, remains at all-times a radical one-off musical explorer, a resolute pioneer of an avant-garde dance music aesthetic taking lineage from the founding fathers of acid house such as Ron Hardy and Adonis, and pushing the musical form to its own limits, adding his own harder almost industrial edge to this unique sound, which Moss sometimes describes as ‘Outsider House’ or, referencing the earlier avant-garde musical resident and pioneer, Sun Ra - ‘Rhythmic Cubism’ and ‘Cosmic Be-Bop’.

Hieroglyphic Being’s music crosses many boundaries and has led to remixes of a wide and diverse list of artists from St Vincent to Hans-Joachim Roedelius (the pioneering German electronic composer and member of Cluster), King Gizzard and the Lizard Gizzard to Adonis and many more. In similar fashion his music has appeared on Ghostly/Spectral, Warp, Ninja, Axis and his own Mathematics Recordings.

Jamal Moss first began working with Soul Jazz Records in 2015 and has released two solo albums (‘The Acid Documents’ in 2015, ‘The Red Notes’ in 2018) as well as a third album under the guise of Africans with Mainframes (with Nolan Reusse in 2017).

Soul Jazz Records’ new Black Riot: Early Jungle, Rave and Hardcore is a brand new collection of heavyweight ragga-influenced hardcore jungle tracks from the early 1990s. Dark and heavy!
Featuring classic and seminal tracks from the likes of Levictus and Krome &Time, alongside a host of rare and little-known ragga & junglist hardcore tunes from the likes of Babylon Timewarp’s hypnotic Durban Poison, Rhythm for Reasons’ mad ‘The Smokers Rhythm’, The Freaky rave-y breakbeat sound of ‘Time and Age,’ Trip One’s super dark ‘Snowball’ and loads more!
Expect super heavy basslines, equally heavy twisted Amen drum loops, even heavier ragga vocals! Original jungle style – roots and culture – from the earliest days of drum and bass.
Included with the first edition of the Black Riot vinyl and CD is a very limited-edition free graphic mini-novel “Black Riot: The Mysterons save Planet Earth from the Xatheroid Angels.” This is the third collaboration between writer Paulo Parisi and Soul Jazz Records. This new graphic story continues the story of black electronic dance music – this time set in London circa 1992 and continues onwards from Soul Jazz’s earlier ‘Invasion of the Killer Mysterons’ (Jamaican electronic dub, co-compiled by Kevin Martin (The Bug)) and ‘Mysterons Invade the Jackin’ Zone’ (about Chicago Acid & Experimental House 1986-93).

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.
The association with Sun Ra is by no means hypothetical, Moss recorded with the Arkestra leader Marshall Allen and a host of free jazz players for the album Hieroglyphic Being & JITU Ahn-Sahm-Buhl’s ‘We Are Not The First.’ (2015). Similarly, his relationship to Chicago’s original acid house pioneers of the late 1980s is no hyperbole. Originally mentored by artist/producers Adonis and Steve Pointdexter, Moss also runs his own Mathematics label, releasing a constant stream of new music by foundation acid house pioneers Lil’ Louis, Adonis and many others.
What clearly defines Moss’s music is that while sometimes pushing the limits of sound to an ear-splitting dimension of experimentation and DIY-electronics – the music is always clearly a progression of the lineage of black music. In the words of fellow Chicagoans, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, it is simply ‘Great Black Music.’ And yet in this uniquely defined sound, Moss somehow manages to draw into this world elements of industrial music, German electronic music (Cluster, Harmonia etc), Detroit’s sci-fi techno artists (Atkins, Saunderson, Craig) and more.
‘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 ‘A 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.