'Unfiltered, unfettered electronic dance music from a modern legend of Chicago House'. *****Mojo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘There is no Acid in this House’ is Hieroglyphic Being’s stunning third solo album on Soul Jazz Records, a resolute and powerful statement of Jamal Moss’s raw, vital, pioneering, Afro-Futurist electronic (dance) music - full of twisted pulsating acid house, machines and ambience.
On his new album Moss once-again draws upon the vast scope of experimentation that has defined Chicago’s musical universe over the last half a century – from the birth of house music with the pioneers Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others to the radical avant-garde jazz legacy of the city - The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra.
Chicago’s musical universe continues to push-further forward today with artists such as Hieroglyphic Being, Angel Bat Dawid, Makaya McCraven, and labels such as International Anthem label and Hieroglyphic Being’s own Mathematics, all continuing to explore radical new music while drawing upon the city’s decidedly Afro-futurist lineage.
Jamal Moss, aka Hieroglyphic Being, remains at all-times a radical one-off musical explorer, a resolute pioneer of an avant-garde dance music aesthetic taking lineage from the founding fathers of acid house such as Ron Hardy and Adonis, and pushing the musical form to its own limits, adding his own harder almost industrial edge to this unique sound, which Moss sometimes describes as ‘Outsider House’ or, referencing the earlier avant-garde musical resident and pioneer, Sun Ra - ‘Rhythmic Cubism’ and ‘Cosmic Be-Bop’.
Hieroglyphic Being’s music crosses many boundaries and has led to remixes of a wide and diverse list of artists from St Vincent to Hans-Joachim Roedelius (the pioneering German electronic composer and member of Cluster), King Gizzard and the Lizard Gizzard to Adonis and many more. In similar fashion his music has appeared on Ghostly/Spectral, Warp, Ninja, Axis and his own Mathematics Recordings.
Jamal Moss first began working with Soul Jazz Records in 2015 and has released two solo albums (‘The Acid Documents’ in 2015, ‘The Red Notes’ in 2018) as well as a third album under the guise of Africans with Mainframes (with Nolan Reusse in 2017).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'As a youth, Moss watched Chicago house pioneer Ron Trent DJ. Today, he’s a link between Trent and his hometown’s thriving contemporary jazz scene (see Makaya McCraven; Joel Ross). Despite an astonishing 50-plus albums in 15 years, Moss’s quality levels are consistently high, his vision unrelenting. On There Is No Acid In This House (spoiler: there’s acid aplenty), beats often simmer in the background – there, but only partly there. On Let Me Know How U Really Feel, they run at warp speed but verge on the imperceptible. Elsewhere, the industrial rhythms (Throbbing Gristle a firm favourite) that wooed teenage Moss are reflected in the scrum of kick drums and breakneck pace of Dark Acidic Organs From The Void. The melancholia lingering over much of Hieroglyphic Being’s robo-funk merely adds to the rich listening experience'. Mojo