Griot Galaxy - Opus Krampus 1984

On Opus Krampus, Detroit's Griot Galaxy bring with them their usual sense of weirdness and entropy, all the while injecting incredibly paced rhythms and a mix of avant-garde and straight-ahead beats. Saxophonist Faruq Z. Bey leads the band with his furious accents and choppy rhythms that scurry by so quickly they almost sound smooth. His support's off-kilter time signatures work out minimal phase shifting patterns to temper Bey's perfectly unresolved tones. Considering the recording is culled from a live performance, one can only imagine Griot Galaxy's stage get-up at the time, usually comprising of mime-painted faces and gaudy, new wave-inspired dress, crossing Sun Ra with Art Ensemble of Chicago. Certainly, many of the sounds here match that comparison as well. This 1984 recording from Austria is crisp and true, as its near studio-like quality is definitely a testament to impeccable engineering. It consists of a mere three tracks, one of them utilizing the entire second side. This track, the 25-minute "Necrophilia," is a full-out assault on the audience with deafening sax skronks and squeals, complex percussion, and three-voice poetry lending an eerie, cult-like vibe to the recording. Opus Krampus is hardly a record that one might expect to come out of Detroit in the '80s, one of the city's roughest decades. And partly because of that assumption it proves to be a brilliant one. AMG.

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