SHABAZZ PALACES - QUAZORZ BORN ON A GANGSTER STAR

speaking of air and darkness, Born on a Gangster Star came into the world in a big damn hurry, like nightfall on an island. You can see it happening, but then again its so gradual that the next thing you knowits dark. Imbued with the energy and ideas from all the creative embers floating in the atmosphere like fireflies, Shabazz Palaces recorded this entire album over the course of two weeks with Blood in Seattle. New gear and new equipment disintegrated comfort zones into dust and a new path appeared in the rubble. Herein the Palaceer continues the tale of Quazar, a sentient being from somewhere else, an observer sent here to Amurderca to chronicle and explore as a musical emissary. What he finds in our world is a cutthroat place, a landscape where someone like him could never quite feel comfortable amidst all the brutality and alternative facts and death masquerading as connectivity. Inspired by days on end spent in the waveswater and light, bothof Southern California, the work came to the Palaceer in a flash, like being picked up by something and carried. Always dribbling with his head up, he can see whats going on around him and react to it, rather than starting in a certain direction and hoping to achieve something upon arrival. Whats goodthe kids ask. What does it even mean, and what does it even matter Who is behind these choices We are all of us sitting under a waterfall of all. this. shit. But its the excess that is casting us into ruts. The Palaceer stays away from the fleeting and the superficial nonessential. Stay away from your deviceyour phantom limband stay away from your imageyour phantom self; that is his decree. Considering the motions behind the things you like to consume artistically, rather than just the way something looks or sounds, and thinking in layers, and trying to be more considerate and not so self-orientedthis is his medicine for combat