Within the first minute, brooding weird keyboard/guitar sounds lurk in the background, odd things creep to the fore at points, a distorted voice speaks of Orpheus and Cerebus, interrupted by sudden shouts and yelps.
After that, it gets a bit weird, see.
I forget the combo the Divine Styler was originally a part of, if indeed he was part of one at all, but it got him to an initial level of attention, associated with such radical hip-hoppers as X-Clan and other, deeply and openly Muslim artists. He went fully solo and in 1991 or so Irving Azoff of Giant Records, a man more well known for engineering such achievements of uselessness as the Eagles reunion, offered the Styler a contract. He got the chance to control everything – recording, writing, production, the lot – and went for it. Maybe Azoff was expecting the next MC Hammer or something, but what he got is one of the most screwy, fascinating, unexpected releases in years.
I remember at the time friends of mine trying to describe this, and the best one anyone could come up with was ‘Funkadelic meets the Residents.’ It’ll have to work as well as any, though conceivably you could throw in Zappa, the Last Poets, Malcolm X, Bob Marley as Bob Dylan, Prince finally forgetting that the charts existed, Roger Waters if he had even the slightest bit of the beat in him, Peter Gabriel actually growing up as a Puerto Rican graffiti artist, one could go on. In any event, the point is – you can’t nail this sucker down, you can’t nail the Styler down. Smooth rock with a jazzy touch that doesn’t suck can support a breathless invocation of the Almighty with "In a World of U," "Touch" can start off with what sounds like a normal enough low-key sample/live band combination until the beats start getting more and more aggressive. "Grey Matter," the company’s attempt at a single from the record, has the straight-up radio appeal but also has what sounds like a harp loop and wheezing keyboard flutes, and on "Width in My Depth," an absolutely gorgeous acoustic guitar supports a gentle, thoughtful sung praise of Allah.
But that’s just a slight touch, a taste, of the instability of this album. "Love, Lies and Lifetime’s Cries" starts with a knock on the door, a low-voiced "They won’t let me in," then a screamed demand for entrance, and that’s just the start as things get more and more weird and wrong – disturbing music blending into beautiful, a freeform rap rant turning into anguished cries to be lot, sudden sax squeals, then for the hell of it a slam right into the straight-up and ever-increasing religious exultance of "Livery." Why? Why the hell not? It’s not like Thom Yorke is the only arty misanthrope there ever was. Or Luke Haines, for that matter.
It’s why another angry, confused and bleary-eyed piece with a buried shuffled beat and muffled squeals can be called "Heaven Don’t Want Me and Hell’s Afraid I’ll Take Over," followed, logically, by "Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea," where the distorted screams are even more louder and more screwed-up, forming its own rhythm for the song as the drones gets more alien and disturbing. And then the beats start. It’s why the Styler has a crack musical team supporting him, even when you check the credits and realize he did most of the almost on his own, a one-man band who picks and chooses when to incorporate the outside touch at his call. This just might be the electric skychurch music Hendrix talked about, because it sure isn’t anything else. Classify it at your own risk, you’ll just be tripping yourself up in the end.