Review: Gerald Cleaver – The Process
Techno unravelled through the M.O. of percussive improvisation, celebrating Detroit and the Black American Male.
At the eight-minute mark, The Process is a polymetric swirl: the insistent ta-ta-tat of the ride cymbal, the stop-start techno kick, the synthesiser loop like a smatter of swept torchlight, the hi-hat switching between steady ticks and brisk shivers. There is no singular downbeat. Instead it's a commotion of pulses and refrains, each on its own jag while spiritually tethered to the same central hub. The entire 36 minutes is driven by this dynamic. Micro-repetitions are piled into lively scenes of fluctuating shape, forging identity through a persistence in energy and intention rather than a persistence of form. The Process is a melding of Cleaver's long career as an improvising drummer and his relatively newfound channelling of Detroit techno, using the fluidity of the former to unspool the metronomic beat of the latter, forgoing the separation of individual tracks in favour of a more blurred, bewildering continuum of advancement, persistence and reprise.
A sprawling depiction of time is matched with a sprawling sense of tonality. Melodies arrive in successions of dissonant chords, which slip between the beats like water down a sewer grate. There are no primary-colour emotional hues. Moods emerge in ambiguous smears: nausea drooling out between reversed cymbals, nostalgia reflecting off Cleaver’s bright, unadorned synthesiser textures...the feeling is heavy yet refuses to collapse into anything precise. I find myself recalling these melodic refrains long after I've experienced The Process – sudden flashes in the listening imagination, like cryptic queries with answers propped out of reach, orbiting the edge of consciousness with a soft urgency.
The cover image is its own collision of sentiments and possibilities. The Process is the first half of a two-parter, with the set celebrating “the power and freedom of the Black American Male”. The photograph comes from the New York Public Library (specifically the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture), showing a barber and customer sometime in the 1950s. “The young men on the cover look like half of men I grew up intently watching as a young kid,” says Cleaver on Instagram. “They looked like family. They looked like friends of the family. They were my neighbors. They were everywhere. They were cool.” The barbershop is a perfect setting for The Process: a steadfast incubator of the fluctuating entity of the “cool”, continually adapting its practice to accommodate the latest styles while remaining a dependable fixture of community congregation. For Cleaver, these men emanate the perpetual energy of kinship and Black America, and also the ever-shifting emblems of contemporary style. The Process celebrates all that radiantly persists – in memory, in defiance – in the midst of all that passes by.
