Hartley C. White
Queens, NY by Kingston, Jamaica artist Hartley C. White recently released the album Something Better via OSR (as part of the imprint’s final releases) that features a vast array of fellow musicians such as Quentin Moore, Zach Phillips, Christina Schneider, Vinny Giannettino, Kate Mohanty, Larry McDonald, Sophie Dickinson & more. Under the recorded auspices of OSR operator/artist Zach Phillips via Manual FX , Brooklyn onto Tascam 388 reel-to-reel; Hartley provides his prophetic poetics with a dream team of co-creators.
Hartley C. White truly seeks Something Better than the “Under The Gun” aspects of society, to the clinking samples of coin that are peppered throughout “Money Was The Motive”, the law & order issues of abuses and more spill out on “Timelock”, and looking at the names behind the fear mongering headlines on “Who Are These”. Everyone brings well timed nu-jazz elements where everything is timed to accentuate White’s prosodic delivery, like on “The Checklist”, to the chrono-controling percussive considerations that instruct you to “live while you’re alive” and not to waste any more time on the cafe ready “Time Is Moving Faster”. Everything is locked into a structure of synergy that hinges off Hartley’s every word like on “Welcome Back To Reality”, statements of humanity & equality on “Everybody Is A Human Being”, or the experimental arrangements of “When She”, “Teaser”, to the paranoid awareness heard on the vintage beatnik night club cut “Everybody’s Looking At Me”. Tributes are made on “Blues For Roy Buchanan”, to the frank reckoning of mortality on “We All Die”, the balancing act of “Keeping Things In Perspective” that then concludes with “Something Better” that remains hopeful with an isolated edge that seeks better times, lives & tomorrows. Let this be your mantra for 2017 & your postlude for 2016.
Hartley C. White’s Something Better album is available now from OSR.
