Album Review: serpentwithfeet, GRIP

GRIP is an ode to Black queer nightlife spaces in Miami, Atlanta, DC and New York City, and a continuum of groundbreaking alternative R&B from serpentwithfeet. The album is something of a moonlighter, inspired by serpent’s critically-acclaimed theatrical debut, Heart Of Brick. The dance-theatre production chronicles a passionate love story within a Black gay club.

Serpent created the show in collaboration with award-winning former Youth Poet Laureate of St. Paul, Minnesota, Donte Collins; ground-breaking multimedia artist Wu Tsang; and the radical downtown surrealist, Raja Feather Kelly. It’s quite the A-Team.

So too are the helmsmen that feature on GRIP – Ty Dollar $ign and Afropunk artist Yang Ya Ya bring the muscle to Baltimore club banger ‘Damn Gloves’; Mick Jenkins throws down a stash of neo-soul on ‘Black Air Force’; and Orion Sun duets on ‘Ellipsis’. Such alliances ensure that serpentwithfeet delves deeper into club music than ever before – GRIP tastes the sweat of early noughties deep house and ’90s R&B.

The record zips by: most of the 10 tracks are south of three minutes, allowing the listener to come up for air and bolt for a chill-out room. It is easy to see why Björk is a fan – the pair duetted on the Icelandic singer’s track ‘Blissing Me’ – as they both specialise in introspective dance music. Impressive stuff.

7/10

Out February 16