Sault - Untitled (Black Is) (LP)

Label: Forever Living Originals – FL00005LP
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: UK
Released: Sep 2020
Genre: Electronic, Funk / Soul
Style: Soul, Contemporary R&B, Afrobeat, UK Street Soul

 

Double album Untitled (Black Is) capped off a 13-month period in which Sault also released 5 and 7. The rush of creativity is all the more astonishing when factoring that core members Dean "Inflo" Josiah Cover and Cleopatra "Cleo Sol" Nikolic also created the latter's Rose in the Dark, and the former, amid other work, co-produced the U.K. Top Ten entry Kiwanuka. Black pride and resistance fueled some of the most powerful songs on the first two Sault albums, so when this third one landed on Juneteenth 2020, amid worldwide protests against police brutality, it came as no surprise that those themes had bubbled to the fore. As a consequence, Untitled (Black Is) comes across as an urgent outpouring of grief, anger, affirmation, and consolation, and at the same time, it stretches Sault's stylistic range to an extent where virtually anything seems possible for their future. In the present, Inflo and Cleo Sol are joined again by Kid Sister as an extra lyricist and voice (heard most often in the numerous poetic interludes), and they're markedly augmented by keyboardist and fellow co-writer Kadeem Clarke, among other unattributed instrumentation and vocals.