Solillaquists Of Sound – No More Heroes

Album Reviews • Thursday June 25th, 2009 • 9:59 am

Soliloquy is defined as “A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener.” In the case of their debut, No More Heroes, the Solillaquists of Sound are considering black history and their place in it.

The album opens with “Marvel” and its wavy keyboard sound and fast flow rap. Halfway through the song a Billy Holiday-esque female singer adds another texture to the song. In fact, in “New Sheriff in Town” they muse that they are “the new Billy Holiday, Cab Calloway, new Nina Simone, new Sly and the Family Stone…Solillaquists of Sound, a new sheriff in town.” Again, male rap shares the stage with the female singer over a driving, repetitive guitar line. To add even more texture to the combination, Chali 2na contributes his unique voice to “Death of The Muse.” In “Gotham City Chase Scene” they nod to hip hop history with numerous Public Enemy samples while “4 People” has a trip-hopped Tribe Called Quest feel. Stepping outside the soliloquy they sing “you might think it’s about us but it’s not just about us picture us performing with no one on the floor,” acknowledging the listener.

Reaching further into history in “Harriet Tubman pt. 2” they sarcastically muse “Harriet Tubman would be proud to see the exploitation we’ve allowed.” While “The Roots of Kinte” opens with propaganda about the “new, submissive Negro” and moves into an aggressive, tribal ode to Kunte Kinte and Shaka Zulu and the oppression that has historically been suffered and risen up against. As if to drive their point home, “Bulletproof” closes with the iconic King speech, “I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man.”

Musically, hip hop instrumentation tends to be simple and repetitive, emphasizing the poetry and primacy of the words. Of course there is a fair amount of this on the album but, like the rapper sharing most of the tracks with the singer, there is plenty of fuller, more developed music as well. In fact, “The Curse” is entirely musical, with no rap whatsoever. A female helmed song, it has more in common with a lullaby than hip hop as she sings, “It’s the curse of pioneers but I know I got a good thing going here.” Indeed they do.

Perhaps the most interesting piece on No More Heroes is the closing, title track. It, like the rest of the album, is both simple and complex. Accompanied by a sparse, sad piano, a female voice philosophizes, “Silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of one choosing not to listen. It is the listener and only the listener that has the power to revive a dormant sound and disrupt this illusion of silence…If we continue to listen, it is in this isolation that we may find the emergence of another heroic voice and as other sounds fade you must begin to realize that the real heroes only die when we stop listening to them.” If that really is the case, then No More Heroes is strangely and ironically titled as I don’t intend on stopping listening to this album anytime soon.