Seven months after its release, A Sufi and a Killer still sounds like a remarkable work of post-hip-hop psychedelia. It's an album that fits on an unusual continuum somewhere between classic backpacker breaks and hazy garage rock, creating a unified sound out of supposedly disparate scenes through sheer force of personality. And the singer who made that unification work did so with a multi-faceted voice-- everything from foggy, deadpan muttering to vivid falsetto soul, all wrapped up in an air of relatable mystery-- that made it all come together. So what happens when you divorce Gonjasufi's vocal tracks from the Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus and Mainframe beats that they fit so well in? Gonjasufi can be easily slotted into just about any genre without losing what makes his style distinct. But on remix album The Caliph's Tea Party, it only clicks when that style stays distinct, instead of being left to the devices of a remixer who seems more interested in distorting it or crushing it beneath the weight of an overbearing squall.
Mark Pritchard's billowing rework of "Ancestors" is the opening cut, and of the collection's dozen tracks, it's the most true to the original material's spirit: it builds off a subtle update of circa-Ummagumma Pink Floyd, all portentious widescreen desert-scape gloom heavy on funereal organs. Add a judicious amount of reverb, and Gonjasufi's rasp sounds hauntingly isolated and adrift, underscoring how fragile he can sound while still holding strength in his voice. That approach fits well elsewhere, too-- he sounds just as vivid over the scrapyard drums of MRR's "Holidays" remix and Hezus's Clinic-esque garage-freakout take on "My Only Friend". And in some of the more transformative style tweaks, where the decayed, organic-sounding original backing tracks are replaced with a thick digital pulse of live-drum house (Bear in Heaven's mix of "Love of Reign") or shuddering, malfunctioning industrial electro (Agdm's mix of "DedNd"), there's proof that this singularly peculiar voice can feel at home in broader contexts.
Then again, that's when you can actually hear his voice, and too much of The Caliph's Tea Party forgets just what an interesting instrument it is. His vocals are sporadically chopped into a hyperactive, pitched-up, stammering paroxysm of notes on Dam Mantle's dubstep revamp of "Ageing", to annoying and often-anonymous effect. Jeremiah Jae's remix of "Kobwebz" and Oneohtrix Point Never's version of "She's Gone" damage his timbre through filters and distortion, deadening some of the subtler nuances that give his voice character and burying them under shrill, underformed beats. But at least they make that voice prominent enough to give you an idea of what they're doing to it. Broadcast and the Focus Group hardly bother on their sound-collage title track, which erratically jumps between loosely seamed loops of backspun string sections and incidental-music cues in a way that has little to do with source material "DedNd"; for all the straining you have to do to find any trace of Gonjasufi's voice, it might as well be an outtake from Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age. The Caliph's Tea Party isn't without its highlights, but it's biggest strength is an ironic one: listening to this only reinforces how great A Sufi and a Killer is.
