Black Arts Lab “Racism - The Perpetual Drone”

12 Experimental Electronic Drone / Noise Compositions
 
“Racism - The Perpetual Drone” was originally slated for release in 2021, but because of its theme and the global proliferation of racism and racial injustice, releasing it on, The United States of America’s election day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, seems most apropos.

This concept album likens racism to an ever-present audio drone, a stalking organism, and a corrupt virus. Each track seeks to evoke what it's like as a person of color to live, navigate, and hopefully survive this insatiable predator that’s always in search of a host.
 
The compositions, like racism itself, are incessant, persistent, and relentless. They hum conjuring the machinery of systemic oppression, hiss echoing the venomous intent of institutionalised incarceration, they crackle and glitch like the snap of a whip ripping through flesh, and deeply reverberate depicting seething hatred - revealing an unsettling realisation that eight minutes and forty-six seconds is actually an excruciatingly long time!
 
This album is an unapologetic uneasy-listening experience created to invoke how - through centuries of trying to deflect its shadow through skin lightening, hair straightening, perfect dictioning, well-mannered “proper” negroing and constant code-switching in an unsuccessful attempt to make others feel comfortable with our very existence - those born within a melanin-enhanced sleeve can never fully escape racism’s perpetual dddddrrrrroooooooooonnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeee.
 
This album is dedicated to all the lives lost at the hands of racists and systemic racism. - Black Arts Lab


“…what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge!"
- Kimberly Latrice Jones (author, activist)