Vernon Reid – Hoodoo Telemetry (Artone/The Players Club Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
Living Colour’s Vernon Reid is about to release a 14-track opus called Hoodoo Telemetry. Reid says it isn’t a linear piece, but a thrillingly tangled tapestry of genres, collaborators and material from different time periods. Its energy and chaos seems to reflect and challenge what Reid considers the “tumultuous”. The 13th Floor’s Jeff Neems gives it a spin:
I must admit I didn’t realise quite how hard Vernon Reid has been working.
His name first cropped up around 1988 when his second band, Living Colour, released the funk/rock/metal crossover album Vivid. Cult of Personality was the big tune on that record, prompting me to buy the tape as a wide-eyed 16-year-old – and by chance a few years ago I came across the 7″ single in a charity store ($1 in case you were wondering). I remember a lot of fluorescent clothing and jumping around in the music video.
After Vivid, Vernon Reid and the other members of Living Colour slipped completely off my radar, so it was sheer curiosity which prompted me to raise a tentative hand to review this. I didn’t know what I’d get.
It turned out I got quite a few different things from Vernon. He’s here there and everywhere on this – the straight-up guitar heroics instrumental to open things up, loping hip hop beat head-nodders on Or Knot or Bronx Paradox, poppy (and slightly sappy) r’n’b on Beautiful Bastard, experimental synth-drums-rock soundscapes like Meditation of the Last Time, and even a skippy broken beat soul number Good Afternoon Everyone and slunky blues-funk on The Haunting.
Black Fathom Five is a slightly techy electronica piece with a scattering of spoken word and Vernon’s guitar seering around in the background.
I was genuinely surprised and impressed by Vernon’s willingness to put out an album this diverse. Most artists wouldn’t veer too far from a successful formula – Vernon ignores that convention to issue a record which is brave in its variety and slick in its production.
Caveat – I didn’t like all of it. Dying To Live was another syrupy number with some cheesy lyrics, and My Little Zulu Babe tries to be some Appalachian folk song but comes off sounding more like a drunk bloke plucking his banjo and smashing his fourteenth Jim Beam. In Effigy reminded me of Coldplay and was promptly skipped.
But on balance, this is a decent album. And if you’re going to try this many things, not all of them are going to work, right?
Jeff Neems
Hoodoo Telemetry is released on 3 October.
Stream/pre-order HERE
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