Divide and Dissolve’s Systemic is a thick wash of sound, equal parts beauty and anguish and creates a wholly encompassing experience for even a casual listener. You can feel the deep intention. Their dense sound is overwhelmingly heavy; a dissonant pounding of percussion, guitars, piano, synths and saxophone, interwoven with passages of orchestral beauty that give a feeling of respite.
The album examines the systems that intrinsically bind us and calls for a system that facilitates life for everyone. It’s a message that fits with the band’s core intention: to make music that honours their ancestors and Indigenous land, to oppose white supremacy, and to work towards a future of Black and Indigenous liberation.
Just ahead of its release tomorrow, Divide and Dissolve share Systemic’s palpable opener. “‘Want’ is a deep dive into longing within a decolonial framework,” tells saxophonist / guitarist Takiaya Reed. “We can want many things, but how will it happen? What is necessary, what systems must be broken in order for people to live?”
It comes alongside a third video from director Sepi Mashiahof who explains, “As ‘Want’ is the song that introduces us to ‘Systemic’, the concept for the video emulates this kind of infant yearning for worlds beyond our current heartbreaking reality. There are so many beautiful textures above our heads that are inaccessible (as there are so many desired modes of existence that are inaccessible), and the rotation emphasises the limbo of what that desire feels like. Trying to reach something, but succumbing to the loop of failure. Still, that infant yearning is persistent, and that compliments the need for hope and cements the importance of idealism as essential tools in our greater struggles for liberation.”
Watch the video here:
AA
Aural Aggravation 