The idea of a milestone
album is pretty laughable if you'reMidnite. After all, with so many albums so
many miles have been covered that marking any temporary resting place as one of
special significance makes little sense.
But Beauty for Ashes is a
milestone of sorts for those involved. It's the first of a trio of long-players
helmed by Tippyof St Croix’s I Grade Records using rhythms by US/VI production
troika Zion I Kings - the follow-ups being byPressure and Lutan Fyah (both
featured here). Despite a decade old association with I Grade, it's also a
landmark in that it's Midnite’s most accessible effort since the up-tempo JA
style roots of 2011’s Andrew Bassie Campbell production Kings Bell.
As with Kings Bell Midnite
keyboardist and musical director Ron Benjamin is not producing the music and
singer/lyricist Vaughn Benjamin’s dense reasonings are laid over less languid,
more conventionally classic roots backings. Zion I Kings rhythms possess a
meditative depth that can be likened to the Roots Radics with a temperate,
distinctly non Jamaican feel. The horns and guitars evoke cool misty mornings
in ancient tropical lands – while the drum and the bass pitch and roll like
ships on choppy seas.
Midnite’s reputation for
prolific issuing of their recorded output is matched by the amount that stays unreleased.
Several tracks originally considered for the project have been culled in the
process of its making and the final ordering is as sure and flowing as can be.
A theme of Vaughn's
thinking is the interconnectedness of everything. And this is a central concept
of the record - both in using a network of collaborators and in the lyrics.
Songs like Same I Ah One (with Pressure) and Same Boat We stress importance of
losing our island mentality. Compassion for all races, especially women and
children figure strongly. Generation Again says of man and woman “Separate and
equal, are together an equal”. Other topics include technology (All I's On You)
and substance abuse (A Healing).
Vaughn’s voice is
insistent and haunting, ancient and yearning, as if calling to us from a dream.
He is often content to take the chorus in the collabs with Pressure, Lutan Fyah
and Ras Batch. Yet even when he has a song to himself he locks with the music
and chants his messages at an intense, measured pace. Every thesis, antithesis,
digression and dialectic is given sufficient room.
Where musically this might
not be as commercial as Kings Bell, it is the next step for people that don’t
“get”Midnite. Those that find the majority of their albums impenetrable may
have an easier time having heard Beauty For Ashes. For it is surely one of
Midnite’s most significant and faultless works – although its true substance is
hard to gauge until the Pressure and Lutan Fyah sequels follow.
