- Another deep—and deeply affecting—concept album from the South African maestro, this time focusing on identity, sentience and belonging.
- Explaining his Bodycode project in an old interview, Paris-based, South Africa-raised producer and singer Alan Abrahams told Textura he was aiming "to dig deeper into a kind of dance music where sounds and feelings really matter." Despite being released under the Portable moniker, his latest LP, My Sentient Shadow, shares the same emotionally-oriented DNA, delivered in a more abstract fashion. My Sentient Shadow tells the story of a "shadow that possesses its own consciousness" and becomes, you guessed it, sentient. Coming off of 2020's The Transit Of Mercury—where he devoted an entire album to a rare astronomical event—Abrahams is no stranger to niche concept albums. Where The Transit Of Mercury was star-studded and dazzling, "My Sentient Shadow" is a dimly-lit, lurking affair that evokes the darkness that stars are suspended in.
Even when the chord progressions feel major and jubilant, they have ominous undertones that approach the uncanny valley. The album unfolds like a shadow imitating light and human emotion, one that gets better at it with each new attempt. Jazzy intro track "The Simulacrum" sounds like the shadow's first steps as a sentient being. It starts hushed, with a creepingly inquisitive bassline, like something scoping out its new surroundings. Once it finds its footing, comically buoyant synth leads uncoil into a funky séance.
"The Self Assembling" sees the shadow assume form, as droney synths twinkle with new understanding over driving, factory line-esque percussion. The narrative culminates on "I Feel Stronger Now", where the emotive piano chord progression and half-elated, half-weary crooning of the title implies that the shadow is learning and assimilating. Lines like, "The world would be better if people were yellow," come off like commentary from a visiting alien, one who is simultaneously excited by and disappointed in the human condition and our needless divides.
Thankfully, My Sentient Shadow never takes itself too seriously. Abraham's zany tenor vocal delivery laces tracks with an absurd and operatic melodrama. On "The Spacetime Curvature" and "Ripple Effect," the vocals feel tongue-in-cheek yet grandiose, almost like a Laibach song. And production-wise, you can hear the influences of acts like Kraftwerk: the synth work is retrofuturistic and astral, while the percussion is high-gravity and industrial. There are also traces of Abrahams' signature African percussion samples rattling away, forming the understated spine of each track. Take the soaring techno of "Fractal Distortion," where robotic bleeps juxtapose African microhouse in a way that only heightens the record's unusual mood.
In depicting the shadow, Abrahams could be referring to a number of things, including Jungian shadow-work, just in the context of sexuality alone. (In that same interview with Textura, Abrahams described coming out as "the best thing that could've happened to me and brought me a freedom that I feel must be encoded in my music somehow.") The soulful "Foreign To You" and the acidic "We Exist," however, imply it could also be about racial discrimination and fully integrating with one's Blackness. "Imagine being a citizen in a city that tells you that your value is indirectly proportional to your melanin," Mandy Alexander monologues on "We Exist."
Whatever it is that Abrahams is referring to, his allegeory takes the fundamentals of feeling and existing and observes them from a bird's-eye lens view. "Life just goes on, but not very long," he sings on the energetic lead single "I Feel Stronger Now." Just as soon as you're given a sense of optimism, it's underpinned by a tinge of dread. Matched with its extraterrestrial ambience and deft percussion, this inability to tell where the darkness ends and the light begins is what makes the South African pioneer's eighth album such a riveting listen—maybe even the best release so far from a producer at the peak of his powers.
Tracklist01. The Simulacrum
02. The Spacetime Curvature
03. Foreign To You feat. NiQ E
04. The Self Assembling
05. Analogue World
06. Cages
07. I Feel Stronger Now
08. We Exist feat. Mandy Alexander
09. Ripple Effect
10. Fractal Distortion