Nubiyan Twist manages to capture something thrilling and unequivocally profound on their third album Freedom Fables. The immediacy of the performances surrounds you like the smell of sweat, smoke and liquor at a summer block party- realizing the stunning energy of a live exhibition in the infinitely repeatable format of a locked groove cut into fresh vinyl, with no loss of fidelity due to translation.
The album is a triumph for the nine-piece, Leeds-based band, organized by Tom Excell- a man who continues to succeed, through collaboration and fellowship, in transposing the spirit of an afro-fusion ensemble through relevant forms of fashionably immediate R'nB and soul.
Funk orchestras used to be a powerful force in popular music but have since become a relic of the disco era- their legacy only surviving piecemeal through the perennial purchase afforded by the persistence of house music and the rediscovery of afrobeat by successive generations of young audiophiles in search of deeper, hard-hitting grooves to ride.
Nubiyan Twist has honed their ability to lay down a rhythmic wallop with the same kind of slap that those old funk bands used to, but with an almost mystic grandeur that utilizes the force of their collected energy to forge a path for themselves in London's rightfully touted contemporary jazz scene.
Even though Tom and company have been at this for a while, Freedom Fables still feels like a grand unveiling and a seizing of hereto unimagined ground. Their vision has solidified and their skills have become more fluid during their short but storied tenure, and the band has become impeccably good at threading together a parable of sound that speaks to their emotive, as well as, experiential disposition.
The twist of this narrative is telegraphed from the title, as the beats of Freedom Fables's arches lead the listener through the process of unraveling and rebinding all of the ways in which humans express their desire for freedom through the stories they tell about themselves, and how they come to understand their humanity through the plotting of their trajectory and the mapping of their path as it intersects, doubles backs, and overlaps with the paths of others.
Freedom Fables is a very tactile manifestation and confluence of related traditions of melody, groove and sonorance which combine to illuminate the countless ways in which we live with and through each other- yes, through work and struggle, but also, thankfully, through the gift of each other's presence and celebration of life itself.
