If there is a place on the musical map that Sun Atlas doesn’t pass through via The Law of Attraction’s scintillating suite of sounds, it probably isn’t a place that needs that much of your attention. It’s as if they have drawn a route map through everything that matters, at least everything that matters in the soul and funk, psychedelic and jazz, roots and experimental realms, for a road trip through deep groove and sassy sonics. Gentlepersons, start your engines.
It’s not just the outfits’ deliberate anonymity that soaks their music in mystery; there is something quasi-spiritual about the exotic and evocative soundscapes they ply on this, their sophomore album, exploring the less tangible, less obvious, less earthly side of their chosen genres and turning them into something akin to devotional celebrations to the gods of groove, the deities of the discerning and the twin guardian spirits of sass and seduction.
As ‘Voodoo Cobra’ slinks its way into the listener’s consciousness, exploring the gaps between garage-soul and trippy jazz-blues, you realise that this is music of the liminal spaces, music that wanders between the real and the ethereal, the familiar and the fresh, the established and the adventurous, music that bypasses the mind and heads straight to the soul. Music enters the body as much by osmosis as it does through the conventional senses.
‘You’re Bound By Nothing’ adds psych vibes to the established soul-sass, and you realise that the music feels akin to exploring an ancient wisdom that is being revealed through the medium of music; primordial truths hidden in primal sounds.
There is something slightly arabesque about ‘Higher Ground’, a sense of a clash of sonic cultures lingering in its brass and organ-soaked sounds; Occident meets Orient, a song built of lingering sounds and lush arrangement, graceful yet groovesome.
Then ‘Bring Em In’ pushes the culture clash even further, with reggae grooves and the island vibes of pan players mixing with liquid psychedelics and soaring saxophones.
Tags and labels will find no traction here, although I would say that this is world music in the truest sense: music of the world, the whole world, made by the world as a collective whole. Actually, even a term like world music feels too constricting. Global music? Cosmic music? Music for the Universe? Such epithets might seem a bit over the top, but give Law of Attraction a couple more spins and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.
