As always, as you head into anything Sheykh Forever releases, I find myself shedding many trappings – musical expectations, the caress of sonic comfort zones, notions of genre conformity, thoughts that I will encounter music made according to the usual adherence to the rules – it’s best, I have learned, to go with the flow and see what happens. The only thing you can expect is the unexpected, or at least familiar sounds drawn from every musical camp and melted and warped into something new.
‘I’m Your History’ opens with strange snippets of music as a radio dial wanders across the wavebands, a good way to introduce an album full of such eclectic artistry. And as it settles down into its groove, alt-pop and dense disco, soulful guitars and small digital explosions-as-beats all wander by marvelling at your confusion…welcome to our world, they say.
‘Saviour’ plays with intense sonic heat and an unexpected disco groove, sitting somewhere between pop and a hard place, soul sass and cutting-edge crazy…which I mean in the very best of ways. ‘Broken’ feels just that until it settles into a hustling, soul-licked groove…Curtis Mayfield being reinvented for a new audience in a world that forgot his messages of peace, love, and understanding, equality and justice.
‘(Guilt)’ somehow feels both old-school and futuristic, a southern spiritual echoing out to beguile future generations; ‘Here Comes the Rain (Pt.1)’ is the sound of Prince reinventing psychedelia, backed by The Mothers of Invention via a 10-minute prog-fuelled opus. And ‘Run For Cover’ ends in a perhaps surprisingly straight-played 60s-infused, spangly pop number…but then it is perhaps what you would least expect, so it’s to be expected. (Hang on, have I already done that joke?)
Fire in the Master’s House is a strange brew, unlabelable, unpigeonholeable, unsecond-guessable, and Sheykh Forever is one of the strangest, most brilliant and rewarding talents working under the radar today. Don’t expect him to be there for long; a hearty ping and the sound of the music industry waking up to the signal is imminent. Surely?
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