"If one needs to know whatever one must know about anything to bring them closer to it the joy is in the existence of it and the the freedom of arriving to the highest pleasure with it not from it."
Ornette Coleman
Sounds Like
An African-American artist from Brooklyn, New York, simply called M. Lamar,
performed songs that were a cross stylistically between operatic excess,
old-fashioned Negro spirituals and demonic possession. Lamar's lyrics
attacking gender and racial stereotypes are too risqué to repeat here but they
brought the house down Thursday at SAW as more than 100 people tried to squeeze
into the gallery's tiny performance venue for a truly decadent, undergound
experience.
Ottawa Citizen
Lamar holds and trills his guttural utterances with the marvelous fortitude and surety of a Nina Simone or a Patty Waters. Wearing his blackademia on his form-fitted leather sleeves with equally tight-ass jeans, Lamar places the listener into often uncomfortable situations. I thought at times, bloody black fetuses might climb out of the piano’s guts, slither downstage, sit and stare accusingly at me. Like Kara Walker, or David Hammons, Lamar confronts with history, shuns with narrative, pricks our noses with shameless recall, all the while smiling, his eyes turned to the floor, waiting..........................................
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World Famous in San Francisco......................................................................
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"The singular artist M. Lamar is a classically trained counter tenor whose brilliant original work is in the unabashedly political yet emotionally powerful tradition of artists like Diamanda Galas and Paul Robeson. He also has a sense of humor, and the songs, with titles like 'That Obscure Object of Desire' and 'Exploitation Chic,' can be sexy, funny, angry, and sad, often all at the same time.".........................................................................................................
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-WBAI Pacifica Radio.....................................................................................
M. Lamar
7" EP - "Dirty Dirty Nigga"/"White Pussy"/"The Conquest"
M. Lamar is not for all tastes, not that that's a bad thing. Recently, I was at an M. Lamar show, and I heard someone comment with annoyance that Lamar's music was like a "vicious buzzing" in the poor listener's ear. Singing in a register better suited to a female soprano like Leontyne Price, and taking inspiration from the theatrically imaginative but polarizing Diamanda Galas, M. Lamar plays minimalist piano and spews provocative lyrics about sex, race, life, and death. In other words, don't file this under "easy listening."
On his new white vinyl 7-inch ("though 9 ½ would be more appropriate," Lamar quips in his publicity), M. Lamar presents three songs.
Side one plays at 33 1/3 rpm and features two of Lamar's more infamous provocations. "Dirty Dirty Nigga" is a rebel's strike against the conformity of the past. Lamar talks about his grandmother working as a cleaning lady and his mother telling him to stay clean. Lamar instead decides to be a "dirty dirty dirty nigga," an intention he declares as he clanks down hard on the piano, violent but also appealingly funky. (As Lamar later sings, "I don't even clean my ass/'Cause I want the funk to last.") "White Pussy" sounds like the come-on of the piano player in a brothel located somewhere between 1920s New Orleans and Hell: "They eat the pussy... They drink the pussy... White pussy for sale." Both of the side one tracks repeat the provocations of their titles again and again as M. Lamar wails and pounds the piano keys.
The track on side two, which plays at 45 rpm (a fact which I missed at first, and led to a moment of puzzlement as a much deeper voice than expected came out of my stereo speakers), offers -- probably intentionally -- a different side of M. Lamar's writing. "The Conquest" seems to conflate the war-stricken state of the world with M. Lamar's philosophy in the bedroom. Far less cynical and in-your-face than the songs on side one, "The Conquest" maintains the atmosphere of Lamar's other tracks but isn't satisfied to repeat a mantra-like verse. Instead, Lamar goes in for the sensual seduction -- "My weapon's yours to feel," he generously offers. But make no mistake, M. Lamar is an aggressor; as he declares in the song's first line, "Defeat is not an option."
All in all, this 7-inch is a solid introduction to the music and personality of M. Lamar. It certainly will be a helpful tool to decide where you stand on the love-him/hate-him divide. But I'd even recommend those folks put off by the upfront taboo-shattering of side one to still give the sultry cut on the flip side a chance.
--Justin
aha... i thought you might have a new album because i noticed someone had mentioned a 'new album' in your comments. i'm very excited to hear the black death. will it be released on cd?
Thanks for being back again among my myspace friends.I'm changing my profile compilation nearly daily but i want to tell you that i've just put on your "White Pussy".Friendly greetings from Germany to you :-),Wolfgang
Ahhh, various things; lack of time to record/tour, as well as the old cliche of 'creative differences'. We're all into different stuff right now and it's hard to get a good creative flow going.
I've been great, though unprecedentedly busy. Of course, what do you know, I'm going to be in Brooklyn again soon for the second Throbbing Gristle concert in May. Are you going?
Let me be the first to rave about your performance at the TeaCup, the best version of the Conquest I've heard yet, but, Dude, you may have seen my smiling almost laughing like an idiot at that new song, which you described as something you were sketching out. It was not because I in any was missing the deeper serious point of the whole thing, it was just one of those moments when you here something so perfect it makes you smile for real joy. That song, which in two lines (Scandalous lines) sums up the whole deadly objectification/fear of the black male in American history and its playing out in the whole sexual thing, would be enough, but then the bridge the spoken Craiglist erotic services bridge, brings it right into those power plays and hidden secret unconscious whatever that plays out not in some distant old time South but still today in the sex industry. Strange fruit indeed this country has produced. Dude, that song is succinct, perfect, and powerful as it is.
i'm well. i just moved and am working on a new record. crazy beautiful acoustics where i'm living now..i want to have a house-show sometime. you should come visit! how are you?
Oh M. Lamar, babes, yer pipes are smokin me, dig the timber, big trees felled, sweet with strycnine. Moira Scar is serious about doin a national tour, hittin NYC early June, would love to play with ya, in many fashions. love, yer olde friend from the ruby rose rat's nest daze . . .
Hello my friend, miss you, hope you're having a good end of 2008. Loved your meditation on the 'loser' and I agree about the Scott Walker doc, I saw it a while back and was very impressed. love! clara
