It starts with the clinking of glasses and cutlery. A sort of mealtime prayer on mortality follows. Several people are talking simultaneously, out of step. As a soft voice starts to sing, the bustling continues in the background. The opening track of A Semblance: Of Return grounds the album in between everyday life and death, in between what’s nearest to us and what’s our own, respectively.
Asher Gamedze tends to be, as Christoph Benkeser has indicated in his excellent portrait for HHV magazine, conceptionally ambitioned, quoting Marx and comparing music to historiography. This, too, is present on his newest album – yet it is also rather grounded, more playful, almost private. »A Semblance« is often underlined by kitchen noises. It stages jazz improvisations as allegories of resistant forms of life. For instance, the song »Distractions« starts out as if someone was using pots and pans as percussion. A choir, Gamedze refers to it as a »reading circle«, chants: »Distractions – the freedom to unthink yourself.« So, this is about breaking with allotted roles and life scripts. For Gamedze, the home is not the place where bohemians are retreating from political life. It is the latter’s flipside, a place of emancipation just like the streets or an assembly. This makes
A Semblance: Of Return an album for anyone who ever dreamt about a better life – together with friends at a kitchen table.
