(((O))) Review: Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears

Baltimore-based producer Infinity Knives (Tariq Ravelomanana) and rapper Brian Ennals first came together for Rhino XXL, a collaborative LP that was released only months into the worldwide pandemic. While clearly picked up on and beloved immediately by those in the know, it was an album that passed this listener by in the furore of those first few months of understandable, warranted panic. I only visited its heady atmosphere of minimalist neoclassical compositions, warped and warmed by experimental drone, and shot through with leftfield hip-hop panache, having heard, delighted and been entranced by its’ follow-up, 2022’s King Cobra.

Listening to Rhino XXL out of the chronology of the duo’s scant discography worked well. I could see the seeds of what would form the roots and foundational elements of their sophomore. King Cobra not only pushes the envelope but tears it open, extracts the blue, sublimates the paper and breathes life into a collaboration that was already assured. A landmark in abstract hip-hop, the creative heights the album reached were almost beyond my scope of reference.

Vocal and lyrical dexterity from Ennals coiled itself around the unusual non-beats that NPR composer-in-residence, Infinity Knives, summoned with his uncanny take on hip-hop production, with an ear more for Max Richter and Jóhann Jóhannsson than The Alchemist or Madlib. In many ways the pair crafted the curious, estranged cousin to To Pimp a Butterfly, and King Cobra rightfully found itself in hip-hop Album of the Year conversations that year, alongside Lamar’s own troubles, fractious yet wonderful Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers and billy woods’ unheimlich masterpiece, Aethiopes.

Fast-forward almost three years, and we have been gifted the third collaborative LP between the pair, the dauntingly named, A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears. In perhaps a knowing move to undercut the seriousness that title portends, the cover of the record is the two unassumedly smiling – almost goofy in Tariq’s case – at the camera, with an alpaca in the foreground, apropos of nothing. The duo certainly have a penchant for mixing humour and a lightness of sonic airiness at times, and this is certainly present in this third opus, but make no mistake this record is incendiary, incisive, unfiltered and unapologetic.

An unpredictable album, it is shorter than its predecessor, but not by much, yet it weighs in with far less songs than offered forth previously (nine to the prior’s seventeen). This provides a heft to each chapter of the record; as the pair scythe through genre-defying production and social critique imbued with Ennal’s signature dark humour.

Originally conceived as an EP, the project hit a number of setbacks both professional and personal (loss of sound files; personal losses and mental health struggles), before unfurling itself laconically, expanding into an unintended, unexpected third full-length in their history. Despite being the core pair at its crux, Ravelomanana and Ennals feel at great pains in the press release to recognise and celebrate Frankie Malvaiz’s (FRANKI3) significant contribution to the records’ overall sound, and quite rightly, too. The textured, experimental sound design and audio layering are largely attributed to her close inclusion and collaboration in the recording process, and the body that brings to their third LP raises their DIY game higher still.

The duo’s mental health struggles are a fixture of the lyrical subject matter of the album, but so too are the factors that have caused so many of us to suffer such issues. Intended to be less social commentary or manifesto than its two forebears, it’s clear neither can untangle politics from their current situation; the relentless slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, the sheer violence that late-stage capitalism now inflicts on all but the top one percent, how history repeats itself on both the national stage of America (racism, classism, sexism, and so on) but also its’ interventionary stance in world affairs until the tide turns PR wise or – more likely – it no longer serves those whose pockets have been filled by whatever heinous action has been inflicted upon a nation many officials couldn’t point out on a map. There’s a gallows humour and resignation to some phrases, despite the punk spirit of fighting the good fight in some refrains: “Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry / But in the end it don’t matter ’cause you still gotta die.”

A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears is also abrasive and challenging, as any thought-provoking art must surely be. Some may not like the caustic refrain of, “The bitch that got Emmett Till killed just died, and I PRAY that it was painful as fuck”, but it clearly puts down a marker of not only where the duo are coming from, but who they are going for, and the expectation that if you’re going to engage with their work, you sure as hell better know your history. Suffused throughout its’ runtime is an exasperation at how our ‘Western’ society continues untrammelled in its relentless quest to consistently, constantly revert to the status quo, even when that familiar baseline some see as comforting and ‘natural’ is deeply troublesome, entrenched with injustice and poisonous to the majority’s well-being.

The musical versatility of this record is something to behold, oscillating as it does between neoclassical, indie, noise, the Upside-Down’s version of boom-bap and whole host of subgenres born in a hinterland I can’t reach. It’s a Swiss Army knife of production and sound design that is mercilessly and mercifully tied together by Ennal’s razor-sharp, trenchant, percipient rapping.  As they weave stories and images that cluster and implode, fission-like, it can be hard to keep up with the experience. It needs, as any quality hip-hop LP requires, multiple listens to unpeel the patinas of meaning infused within. It’s a perplexing record – a stunningly accomplished record, deadly serious, stoic and poised; while also wildly, proudly DIY, confessional in the way a friend is after that third drink, and delighting in a friendship that freely plays with genre as some can only do in the exuberance and joyous folly of youth.

While King Cobra to these ears still remains their zenith thus far, being somewhat more lyrically focused and poignant and self-contained and self-aware than the kaleidoscopic invention that sometimes colours just a little too far outside of the lines that A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears is want to do, Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals new cut is still acute, whetted and serrated enough to leave an impression and a realisation that a wound existed there long before this third thrust ever landed.