Review Summary: A new id..
In the overstimulated wake of online self-publishing, some young artists can escape even the most retentive listener, no matter how talented and promising they are. Born in Accra, Ghana, Jojo Abbot has been moving between London, Copenhagen and New York, tirelessly recording, painting, writing, dancing, photographing, producing, and generally doing all the things that make the narcissistic downfall of a post-post-modern artist. I can’t attest to the rest of her artistic endeavors, but as far as music goes, Abbot’s first official EP “Fyfya Woto” is eloquent testament that plenty good can come from someone stretching themselves in every direction, if only to find where they belong.
At four tracks and 16 minutes, “Fyfya Woto” is a small burst of creative stamina, as instinctual as it is involved, a product of some pretty sophisticated studio work and a great deal of charisma on top. Abbot sticks close to her heritage, using Ghanaian slang and legend as lyrical and compositional motivation, and short though it may be, this EP’s got some proper jewels to its name.
“To Li” is incredible, a nervy dancehall track swirling in effects. A digital water-phone wails, militaristic art-drums snap away, and a deep deep bass pulses. Abbot is restless over it, shifting from rap-chants in Ghanaian, to English soul on the chorus. The music is similarly antsy, thin and spiny one minute, textured ambience the next. It’s all done effortlessly, and Abbot stays in the spotlight throughout. Her fashion and demeanor play a big enough role in the music itself that seeing her short films and videos is essential to getting the whole picture.
Her voice pilots “Pi Lo Lo” through its first atmospheric half, before the song slides into slow dense dub, a fuzzed-out bassline crackling around her. “Le Le Le” deals with the subject of just how malignant memory can be. Though most of the song is sung in Ghanaian, Abbot provides ample backstories to the lyrical matter on her website, little condensed fables that tackle everything from tribal wisdom to the morality of the modern world.
There is sublime asymmetry to almost every note on “Fyfya Woto.” Electronic effects pop up in wonky places, acoustic guitars interrupt flow suddenly, percussion stalls and kicks at random points, and Abbot’s vocal intonations are the biggest culprit. There’s almost Beefheart-like entropy to how she’s able to tie a song together by slicing it up with her voice. “Lom Vava” is perhaps the dullest cut here, a prosaic enough sad love song, but even then, an anxious drone effect, and Abbot’s odd vocal tics elevate it past a simple RnB tune.
If there’s anything to hold against “Fyfya Woto,” is that it seems totally enwrapped in polyethylene. Aside from the occasional acoustic strum, every sound and blip here is a result of immaculate synth looping and studio tweaking. These songs rush in and out before it becomes an issue, but over a full-length, it could give the music a cosmetic flatness.
Abbot has been on a kick, releasing a steady stream of singles and throw-away rehearsal material. They show her trying her hand at the kind of compressed house pieces Andy Stott has turned into a science. It’s exciting to hear where she will go next. For now, art seems to drip from her fingernails, and if she can provide an alternative to the kind of bland, banal female empowerment Beyoncé and Co. are wielding nowadays, then I hope we hear more of her yet.
