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7:06 · 917 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The premise is the output rate plus the secrecy: five albums in four years from a collective that stays out of public view, with one of them available for only 99 days.
▶ 00:00:00
- The release dates are part of the work. The debut, 5, came out on the fifth day of the fifth month of 2019, and 7 followed on 27 September.
▶ 00:00:40
- The one confirmed name comes off the back of the records: Dean Josiah Cover, who works as Inflo, sits at the helm of the project.
▶ 00:01:51
- Inflo's other credits are the strongest evidence of who is involved, including the whole of Michael Kiwanuka's Kiwanuka and Little Simz's Sometimes I Might Be Introvert.
▶ 00:02:09
- He was producing Cleo Sol's records at the same time, and she sings much of the soul vocal on Sault's albums, with Chicago rapper Kid Sister on the hip hop tracks.
▶ 00:02:30
- The 2020 pair, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise), arrived in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the first carrying a mission statement with it.
▶ 00:02:30
- The observation that holds the review together is what they do with the word black, treating it as something characterised and expansive rather than only a description of skin.
▶ 00:03:25
- Rise was nominated for the Mercury Prize, and the 2020 records are picked as their best, more cinematic than what came before.
▶ 00:04:13
- Nine was deliberately pulled after 99 days, which the video reads as a way to sell physical copies rather than live on streaming income.
▶ 00:04:41
- The closing argument: in an era where personality is the product, staying anonymous is itself the statement that the music should carry everything.
▶ 00:06:13