Listen to “Zami” by Moor Mother
Voice booming through buzzsaw synthesizers, Moor Mother heralds the utter destruction of the oppressive present on “Zami,” kicking open the door to a future free of the tyranny of ordered time. The song’s apocalyptic mood and tightly choreographed chaos are well-worn territory for the Philadelphia-based sound artist. BRASS, last year’s collaborative album with billy woods, was a blood-splattered surrealist voyage through history and the occult, beginning with verses delivered from “outside the concentration camp, looking for a light” and ending with Moor Mother swearing vengeance on the Grim Reaper. On “Zami,” she takes on that mantle herself. “No more master’s clock/We travel spaceways,” she bellows, arriving in a cloud of horror movie organ and synth that hovers like a UFO above a fresh crop circle. The grotesque atmosphere churning around the vocal is enough to send you running for cover, but Moor Mother insists on liberating herself from time at every turn: “That’s a dead clock,” she insists, ushering us past any uncertainty in a grim deadpan. Powered by a cosmic urgency, “Zami” plunges us into the middle of an interstellar revolt long in the making.