New York composer, poet, and performer JJJJJerome Ellis dropped the single edit for Loops of Retreat.
The leading track is taken from the upcoming album The Clearing which comes out on November 5, 2021 via NNA Tapes.
Spoken word with a mix of experimental electro-looping beats kind of vibe song.
Very heavy at times with it’s social commentary too.
About the track:
Loops of Retreat opens with processed saxophones leading us into a kind of sonic forest: dense, mysterious, and dynamic.
Over the soundscape, Ellis speaks: “My thesis is that blackness, dysfluency [i.e. stuttering and other forms of disabled or non-normative speech], and music are forces that open time.”
As Ellis reads, the forest grows into the pauses in his stuttered speech. A trap-inspired beat with stuttering hi-hats, crisp snares, and beefy kicks gradually builds as we move deeper into the forest.
The track’s title references the “loophole of retreat” Harriet Jacobs describes in her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
On this track, and on the album as a whole, Ellis suggests that the looping sounds of Black music, and the looping syllables and silences of the Black stutterer, resist linear time and offer new ways of being.
The track ends with fire running through the forest, clearing ground for further growth.
Loops of Retreat (Single Edit) gets:
/10.
JJJJJerome Ellis – Loops of Retreat (Single Edit) [Music Video]
