- Mr. G strays far from the funky tech house that made him a household name in dance music, plunging instead into a delightful abyss.
- When Australia was at the centre of the global pearling industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, the country relied on forced (or unfairly cheap) labour from Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples, as well as indentured Asian workers. The pearls in those shallow waters were eventually depleted, but demand kept pace, making pearling increasingly deadly as exploited divers swam deeper to scour the ocean floor for the prized phosphorescent object. If the high water pressure at the pit of the sea wasn't cruel enough, pearlers were also met with a host of risks: drowning, decompression sickness, attacks from marine predators. If Colin McBean, AKA Mr. G, had this troubling history in mind while recording his latest album, Pearls Don't Lay On The Shore, it's hard to tell—the record's liner notes are scant. But describing the album to a friend, I immediately landed on the words "time-travelling underwater."
The LP, murky and drifting, digs deeper into the darkness of McBean's 2021 album, The Forced Force Is Not The True Force, which presented a strikingly intense world for an English producer long established as a master of spacious, soulful house driven by a profound love for jazz. This isn't to say his music hadn't been brushed with melancholy in the past. His specialty—rousing the funk out of personal and solemn subject matter—is how his beloved 2001 edit of Mike Grant's "Struggle Of My People" practically outshone the original, and what made the album about his father's death, Personal Momentz, gleam with sonorous melodies and humourous samples. But The Forced Force Is Not The True Force looked beyond the dance floor into a more contemplative atmosphere, a marked departure in his sound that perhaps only the pandemic could inspire. This is the cliff from which McBean dives off into the even obscurer waters of his latest album.
McBean rarely sits down for interviews, instead writing semi-autobiographical stories through his work. On Pearls Don't Lay On The Shore (which is dedicated to his "amazing Mum Sylvia (all I am)"), this unravelling continues with songs that allude to the simultaneous sweetness and despair of a life's impermanence. Some of the tracks that address loss directly arrive unhurried and pastoral, like a waltz through God's dwelling place. On "Goin' Home... See My Ma," flurries of flute rush in and softly peter out, like the yawn of the lazy periwinkle daisies in Alice In Wonderland. The mildly anxiety-inducing ticking clock on "For Those Who Have Lost" ultimately opens up to warmth: lightly massaged hand drums, bouquets of flute and sub bass that sounds like it's rising from the great depths of the sea.
The space on the album makes room for deep reflection. When Garf's omnipresent voice on "Mantra 13" sermonises about striving toward peace—"Peace / We can dream about it / We can talk about it / We can scream about it. We can march for it"—it's a gust of empowerment. The sparsity of the track, with its isolated hand drums and muted chords, allows listeners to absorb the full density of his words.
But these silences can sometimes be overcome with a sinister rush of sound. "No Safe Zones'' sneaks up on you, its ominous kick growing louder like an approaching night train while a searing Drexciyan melody glazes over to finish off the slinky scene. On "Flippin' Leads P'ed Me Off'' (perhaps the sequel to A Part Of Me Vol. 2's "My F'd Up Mixer"), what sounds like a field recording of cawing seagulls stutters in sync with plodding kicks. When brooding pads overwhelm the trippy beat, it's transformed into something more threatening, like a beach day gone horribly wrong. A similar shift takes place when villainous chords disrupt the plaintive calm of "Sleepless," a subterranean song in which a barely audible, distorted vocal resides in the underbelly and a cabasa rattles steadily.
Then there are the funk dreams, vestiges of McBean's older work. McBean's sampling practice mines from a rich repertoire of jazz and soul, often only cutting a brief vocal riff or captivating one liner before repeating these flashes of sound to the point of delirium. His refined soulfulness comes through in the vocalist's breathy, soulful melisma and funky James Brown-reminiscent guitar on "Like Dat Y'all" and the '80s R&B swing of "Gratitude (Good Bad Indifferent)." The record's most oddball track sounds like a battle between the old and new worlds of Mr. G. On "Good Days Bad Days" everything appears slightly out of tune, experimentalism channelled through a guitar that trudges on and knotty balls of meowing vocals that swirl endlessly, completely indecipherable. Then there's something a bit more classic—a chunky bassline that sounds like the Jaws theme, slowed down and funkafied. However you see it, like the remainder of McBean's most leftfield album to date, it's a delightful kerfuffle to hear.
Tracklist01. For Those Who Have Lost
02. Goin' Home...See My Ma
03. No Safe Zonez
04. Found My Space In Between
05. Floppy
06. Matra 13 (peace)
07. Flippin' Leads P'ed Me Off
08. Long Time Comin'
09. New York On My Mind...
10. Sleepless Nightz
11. Like Dat Y'all
12. G's Bingi
13. Good Days Bad Days
14. Gratitude (Good Bad Indifferent)