Shabazz Palaces have shared a new single called “Dawn In Luxor” from their 2014 release, Lese Majesty on Sub Pop. The new visual, which director Stephan Gray dubs a “daydream on a nightwalk,” pairs stunning cinematography and VFX, with footage courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Hubble and Cassini missions.
What people are saying about Lese Majesty:
Lese Majesty is Shabazz Palaces getting interstellar, a set of intricate, enigmatic, yet meaningful suites complete with an (initially) impenetrable multidimensional blueprint/map connecting it all in the liner notes. Beneath the visuals, the album contends with a strain of Afrofuturism that puts its faith in finding unities in contradictions and clarity in riddles (“I’m having my cake and I’m eating cake,” “facts stated to enhance what is pre-born,” “we try to unreproduce six tension intervals”), reconciling structure and formlessness, forethought and spontaneity….meter-defying breaks and tactile, synthesized bass-church/musique concrète production that turns human language into primordial elements of cosmic influence. It’s humbling stuff that urges you to dance but knows full well that, to do so, you’ll need to relearn new and better steps [50 Best Albums Of 2014] – Pitchfork
“Unlike their previous, also brilliant full-length Black Up, Shabazz Palaces’ new “sonic move” Lese Majesty is not necessarily conducive to absorption in small doses. The record is a massive, dense monolith, divided into suites that only start to make sense after countless repeat listens. It’s a bridge from rap’s beginnings in the early ’70s into its future — structurally, thematically, lyrically, sonically, all of it — that sounds so many light years ahead of everything else in the genre that its nods to the past only reveal themselves after one invests real time immersed in what we called “the impossibly deep, singular astral landscape” that the group has created.” [Album of the Year] – Gorilla Vs. Bear
“With their second album, Seattlehiphop duo Shabazz Palaces unshackled Afrofuturism from cliche in order to present a holistic almost familiar worldview that the future is already here, before demanding an honest response to that revelation. Hua Hsu said: Abstraction is only useful insofar as it shakes our reliance and this is what makes Lese Majesty’s primal futurism such a bewildering experience. Palaceer raps with secularity and conviction as all that was once solid melts into air – rules and codes vanish, leaving nothing but ghosts while beats dissolve into pretty colors.” [#7 / Albums of the Year] – The Wire
