UNVEILING 2020’S MOST MYSTERIOUS NEW STARS: SAULT!
AMONG THE lesser-known names who figure in MOJO’s Top 75 Albums Of 2020, Sault stand out – not least because they appear in the list twice. Even their biggest fans have struggled to find out much about the London-based retro-future soul collective, who released four albums between May 2019 and September 2020 – the MOJO-endorsed latter pair, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise), both doubles – while staying defiantly unphotographed and more or less anonymous.
Sault’s albums have offered up a mysterious blend of post-punk and disco, warped ’70s Afrobeat and ’80s electro-soul, along with shades of What’s Going On-era
Marvin Gaye, the drumming of Jaki Liebezeit and the sun-reaching chorales of Rotary Connection. But the only back cover credit on Sault’s 2019 debut, 5 – followed four months later by 7 – was for its producer, Inflo, the Michael Kiwanuka studio collaborator whose real name is Dean Josiah Cover, and who was eventually revealed to be the band’s ringmaster.
BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Gilles Peterson was an early champion of Sault, buying a copy of 5 after hearing it played in tastemaker Soho record shop, Sounds Of The Universe. “It was really interesting to me,” he says, “because it was like a cross between Loose Ends, sort of ’80s British music just pre-Soul II Soul, and lopsided American disco.”
With each successive release, another layer of mystery has been stripped away, revealing the key Sault members to be west London singer Cleo Sol – whose sadly yearning or gutsy and defiant vocals are often lightly distorted and fed through dubplate reverb – bassist/keyboard player Kadeem Clarke, and Illinois rapper Kid Sister, AKA Melisa Young.
While Sault politely turned down MOJO’s request for an interview, Gilles Peterson has his own theory as to why Inflo in particular wishes to avoid the spotlight, citing the producer’s media shyness. “I can’t speak for him,” he stresses, “but he’s evidently not interested in doing anything outside of what he’s good at in the studio.”
On June 19 this year – or Juneteenth, the annual holiday marking the end of slavery in the US – Sault released Untitled (Black Is), a rapid response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis only three weeks before. “Take off your badge,” Sol sang with cool insistence in the gorgeous Wildfires, “we all know it was murder.” Peterson was so blown away by the album that he played it in its entirety that day on his BBC 6 Music show. “I thought, Well, am I just overly excited about it because I’m getting this brand new record handed to me on the day?” he says. “But then I listened to it again and again and again. Not only is it a great response record, it’s also full of great songs. You can feel that this is just genuinely pure music.”
Tom Doyle
“This is just genuinely pure music.”
GILLES PETERSON