Niggy Tardust

Currently, I can’t not listen to Saul Williams‘ new album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.

I hadn’t heard of Saul Wiliams before seeing him support Nine Inch Nails a few years ago, and I grabbed his excellent eponymous album the day after the gig. Trent Reznor’s production of Niggy Tardust is a logical progression, and you can sense his familiar NIN sonic traits—slowly building orchestrations of tense atmospheres, fuzzed-up and tightly wound guitars, and sinuous, rumbling synth lines—all the way through this album.

The initial tracks I seem to skip a lot. The swaggering digital hardcore of ‘Black History Month’, the wild shrieking onslaught of ‘Convict Colony’, and the Public Enemy-driven ‘Tr(n)igger’ get plenty adrenaline going, but they’ve not made much of a home in my mind’s ear. I’m no U2 fan, but it’s the fiery, pulsing, buzzing cover of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ where things really kick off for me.

From there on in, there’s a few near-duds—mostly, for me, the sparser tracks like ‘Niggy Tardust’ and ‘Raw’. But between the smouldering ‘WTF!’, the brooding jazzy hip-hop of ‘Scared Money’, and the stupendous final five tracks, the album racks up enough infectious refrains, potent lyrics and atmospheric sonic thrills to make it an all-round triumph.

And it’s free. You can download it in 192Kbps MP3 format for nothing, or pay a mere $5 (100% of which goes to the artists involved) for the extra options of 320Kbps MP3 or FLAC lossless formats. All versions include a PDF with artwork and lyrics, and all files are 100% DRM free—no restrictions on where and how you play them. Why wouldn’t you?

From the penultimate track, ‘Raised to be Lowered’, lyrics that have seen me through some harsh moments recently:

To manifest your dreams before you manifest your fears
To navigate beyond the treachery of self despair
To find the balance between all you sense and all you see
To find the patience and the strength it takes to let it be
To stand amongst the crowd and have the strength to hold your own
To throw away the pen and pad and simply be the poem
To rise above hatred to love through seeming contradiction
To seldom take a side and learn to compliment the friction.
To bring about the change within that we can’t live without.
To shift and re-arrange ideals and learn to deal with doubt.
To voice the victory and unlearn ways of self-defeat
To learn the value of, “Yo, fuck the words just ride the beat”
To leave the comfort zones of all you know to all you feel
To step beyond the void and realize the unknown is real
To re-imagine every obstacle as just means of honing craft
And learn to laugh at failure’s funny dream