The Sonic Liberation Front are rarely seen or heard outside their native Philadelphia, and with a name that evokes a Fallujah breakdance corps and the line-up of a free jazz ensemble, you might assume the band plays fire music in the tradition of the 1960s. Their own description of the music is harder to digest: "Afro-Cuban Yoruba Roots meets Post Modern Free Jazz and Electronica." With all that build-up, a newcomer might wonder if the band is some kind of world music mélange, and if so, whether they pull it off: With so many influences that qualify as "exotic," the Sonic Liberation Front could have splintered into pastiche like the menu at the Rainforest Café, or muddied the colors into a drab blend.
But the band's second album never pins them to one sound: The 11-piece ensemble proceeds with the grumbling unity of a town meeting that keeps ditching its own agenda. While the horn section evokes a mid-60s Blue Note recording on the cusp of avant-garde (especially the searching drift of "The Sirens"), the unison passages verge on dissonance, like the head on the title track that frays apart a little differently each time. The horns front a rhythm section that includes three percussionists armed with congas and bata drums, with no piano or guitar in the middle to mediate.
The instrumentalists lock intensely together, like on the taut rhumba that ends the record, while other times, the soloists have to carry on their own rants: On "Seize the Time", a saxophone burns itself out in a fury while the percussionists amble by, minding their own business. Female voices break out in Yoruba, and Chuckie Joseph sings his "Agua Dulce" over solo guitar. But where another band would turn these interruptions into a collage, Sonic Liberation Front just throw them into the mix, and the recording-- which sounds as live as a gig at the local community center-- never cues our responses or tells us which argument to agree with.
With a world of options laid out in front of them, Sonic Liberation Front chose exactly the right ones. Exceptionally written and arranged, Ashé a Go-Go runs through compositions that are as terse and muscular as they are diverse, and every new turn fits the band's voices. While it's not always right to judge music by the engineering, the engagingly physical sound is this album's clincher: It's exhilarating for its own sake, but too matter-of-fact to summarize a band that barely tries to describe itself.
