Best of 2020
As you might deduce from its title, the debut album from South African drummer, Asher Gamedze, is heady, spiritual affair, and touched with not a little melancholy. That'll likely come as no surprise to anyone who heard Gamedze play on Angel Bat Dawid's The Oracle, guesting on the outrageously brilliant Capetown. Call me lazy, but comparisons to Makaya McCraven are inevitable, what with Gamedze being a prodigious drummer leading a band, but it does also speak to their mutually expressive and refined styles, obviously virtuoso but rarely showy and with a real freedom in their playing. In fact, Dialectic Soul is as much emotionally led as technical, opening with a three part movement not unlike a less ecstatic Village of the Pharaohs. Which is a way around saying Gamedze is a well-versed but intuitive player with an eye on the classics. I can live without the vocal turn midway through, but when the band cuts and flexes in such a naturally lucid way they suggest the noises coming out of Chicago via International Anthem and London courtesy of Total Refreshment Centre portend to a wider cultural dialogue. Spiritualism knows no borders i suppose...
