Sault - What's the story?

Is that Simz on "Free"?

What!?

WHAT!?

xp also anyone knows who the vocalist on "God In Disguise" is?

also anyone knows who the vocalist on "God In Disguise" is?

getting very strong madonna vibes from whoever that is on "god in disguise" and "life we rent but love is rent free" which are both amazing.

just came here to ask that! She's kinda jarring with that theatrical vibrato, but it adds to the Minneapolis shoulderpads feel of the track.

Minneapolis shoulderpads feel

yes!

100%

I worked on the new SAULT project.

Grateful for Inflo and his trust in me and my team 🖤🥹. He is a genius. Honestly.

Good luck guessing the password to download the albums for free 🖤✨

— Livi Lovez (@livilovez) November 1, 2022

saulted by voices

a saulty salute

Listened to Today & Tomorrow (the Zamrock-ish album) first. It's good; somewhere between Afro-psych and the Jazz Is Dead series run by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, November 1, 2022 11:08 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i randomly started here - loving it. i'm always surprised the muhammad/young series doesn't get more hype, there's been some great stuff

So far I've listened to Today & Tomorrow, Earth and Aiir. Aiir is more of his orchestral work, which is nice enough but I feel like he should be doing movie soundtracks or something. But the other two are great! Love the rock/punk vibe on T&T, and Earth has the kind of range that the 2020 albums did. "Valley of the Ocean" is my top pick so far, but I've liked a bunch of the songs.

I'm going to take my time listening to these albums. i put on T&T earlier while catching up on emails and actually forgot what i was listening to. I genuinely thought i was listening to some lost Zamrock gem for a while until the fourth track when some Sault-y-ness became apparent. Then it went all over the place in the best possible way. The Plan is as close to Punk as i imagine Sault might get. So good! While T&T perhaps starts off feeling like an unfinished experiment / jam it soon becomes fully formed greatness. Above The Sky is already in my imagined Sault's Greatest Hits playlist.

looking forwatd to listening to 11 tomorrow.

I'll take my time re-listening to them, but finished my binge today with Untitled (God) and 11. Both also really good! Leaving Aiir aside — and it's not bad either, just sort of bores me — the other four are way more killer than filler. With a big musical range. Pretty impressive.

so far only heard untitled (god) and today & tomorrow - don't really care for the lyrical focus of untitled (god) but it's one of their strongest releases. today & tomorrow is a bit patchier though

11 is fine, it's focused on their lower-key bass-driven sound, quite pleasant but nothing exciting here

I've only had time listen to fragments of each release so far. I'm skeptical of this predominant turn towards religion. I have listened to and loved a whole lot of gospel blues and religious music in my life but it's not necessarily something for which I turn to Sault. It kinda makes them seem more like a cult than an interesting collective of artists, but I recognize this may be a snap judgment.

Air is the best album of its kind in years, if not decades. On first listen Aiir is reaching the same bar, I'm blown away

That's interesting, what would you call albums of its kind? I'm not sure where it resides.

Can't yet sort through all my feelings that this lode of music and ideas unleashes, but what consistently amazes me is that I buy all of their conceptual swerves. Maybe because they've insulated themselves from commercial concerns, even when the self-affirmation gets thick (their trait which I find least appealing) I still go with it. Find it transcendent even. A track like "Together" on 11 - do they work out a Band of Gypsies groove and then decide "let's have Althea and Donna styled vocals on top"? Cause it's a great idea, but in the hands of Lenny Kravitz or Jack White or Raphael Saadiq is would be precious or overthought or annoying. They really know how to work an idea without draining the life out of it.

the sault cheese incident

"The Return" on Today & Tomorrow has the most "Radiohead" guitar figure on it

actually some of this really reminds me of The Smile

@ tipsy like the history of orchestral/chamber music mostly-instrumental "albums" that may-or-may-not contain elements of 50s/60s easy-listening; David Axelrod, High Llamas. Last track on Air ("Luos Higher") sounds like Eyvind Kang at his best

The quality of arranging is at such a virtuosic level that the entire endeavour feels effortless in the best possible way

I haven't delved into the other four of the new albums yet but am excited to do so tonight

I think I might like AIIR more than AIR

Right now 11 and Earth are my favorites of the batch, I'm finding the production and messy drumming on Today & Tomorrow a bit annoying

The quality of arranging is at such a virtuosic level that the entire endeavour feels effortless in the best possible way

ty fgti, that's an interesting assessment since that realm is pretty much unknown territory to me. I do get what you're talking about here, definitely it feels very accomplished. As does most of what he/they do. I'm trying to think of anyone or anything comparable to Sault and can't really. Obviously they have a ton of influences mentioned throughout this whole thread, but the range and virtuosity and sheer dgaf-ness of the way it's all presented is really something. One thing I thought with all five albums dropping was, this is what Prince probably would have liked to do in the mid-'80s, when he was just firing on all cylinders. Not to compare Inflo to Prince, but the "Watch this trick, now this one" vibe is similar.

Also someone's gotten around to putting these on YouTube, so here's one of my favorites so far. ("Valley of the Ocean," which I mentioned above.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEJr7K0h9Jw

actually some of this really reminds me of The Smile

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, November 3, 2022 4:04 PM

I remember thinking when I listened to The Smile, that Thom & Co must've been listening to Sault

Also, this is the dumbest, most wrong-headed music-related written opinion I've seen in many, many years:

https://andrewdubber.com/over-saulted/

Did Geir write that?

I'd call them more a groove band than a jam band, but he's not wrong about that part — it's part of what I like about them, they build songs around grooves. But the idea that this is all mostly improvised is bizarre.

discussed a lil bit here - OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

Terrible take. Also it’s sort of taking issue with statements not made by the band? The band themselves are not explicit about their intentions with each release, we don’t know if they’re commenting about the perception of scarcity or democratization of art or the disposability and/or fleetingness of the medium or whatever this reviewer is taking from it.

The anonymity amplifies the music, which should be the focus imho

between assuming that most of the music is improvised and that the band is a cooperative of hundreds of pro session musicians "donating bits of spare stuff"(?), he seems to be completely naïve about the basics of how bands operate and how albums are recorded. its very strange, especially considering his bio identifies him as a former "Professor of Music Industry Innovation"

also funny that this guy whose expertise is new media/"innovation" seems to take it for granted that AIIR must have been created with a massive live orchestra and not with VST/synth stuff

is that piece going viral or something? I've never heard of this guy

It’s a dumb piece

AIR does sound like a hybrid of session orchestra and VSTs… what impresses me most about it is the plucked string writing— dual harps (which at times sounds like, and might be, a kora) and pipa, it’s produced/recorded/written extremely well— less so but still the case on AIIR

Side effects of that article - it is giving me nostalgia flashbacks to circa 2007-08 when everyone (including me) had a music blog and felt like they needed to express their opinions in 500-word daily dispatches on every item of music news. That tone of self-inflicted resentment, "Why must I be obliged to engage with this??"

I listened to 11 today and every song immediately set the mood but lost my interest by the end

that's how i felt too, nice vibes but not much more

The piece linked above is indeed terrible but I have to concede this one point:

Making everything free might help audiences at a time of fiscal crisis, but it does absolutely nothing for the cause of independent musicians desperately trying to assert the economic value of their work.

TBF, they were saying that when Radiohead did the In Rainbows experiment so it's not like this is even a new complaint on his part.

it's very silly to be hung up on albums being given away freely in the age of streaming, when that's an actual problem for "independent artists desperately trying to assert the value of their work"

I listened to 11 today and every song immediately set the mood but lost my interest by the end

Every cult artist has their Sandinista where they flood the audience with so much material they're not sure how to engage with it.

How long is each album btw?

aiir is 25 minutes, untitled (god) is 73 minutes, the others are around 40 minutes

Making everything free might help audiences at a time of fiscal crisis, but it does absolutely nothing for the cause of independent musicians desperately trying to assert the economic value of their work.

I intuit that this is a really bad argument, but I don't have the verbal skills to explain why rn

I was struck today while attempting a listen-through of Untitled (God) that the inclusion of so many essentially-unfinished tracks and field recordings was depreciating the value of my time spent as a listener

I think that argument would make more sense for an independent artist that operates far less cryptically and maybe only releases one album every 2-3 years. I think most people familiar with Sault realize by now they're doing their own singular thing and keeping people guessing.

BTW, I'm listening to "Air" for the first time this year. It didn't sound like it would be my thing but it kinda is. It sounds the score of an uplifting film from an alternate 50s/early 60s Hollywood that had greater equality.