Led by Jabirr Jabirr frontperson Loki Liddle – Gold Coast-based (Yugambeh, Kombumerri) 6-piece band Selve today announce their forthcoming debut album ‘Breaking Into Heaven’ due out on 12 September, which has the honour of being the first full-length album to be recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios by an Aboriginal artist. And by way of introduction, Selve today also releases the first track off the album, the blistering title track ‘Breaking Into Heaven’.
It’s not that often you get an overwhelming lightning bolt of pleasure from hearing something so astounding for the first time, and from the opening bars of ‘Breaking Into Heaven’ you know you are in the presence of something very, very special.
Kicking off with a crescendo of sound, Liddle’s sardonic abrasive delivery kicks in with a kung-fu strike to the head. It is like a blowtorch lighting the fuse for a rocket blast as the track bursts into an exhilarating motorik pulse. A cathartic throbbing pulse on the way has the effect of the application of a defibrillator to the heart without an off switch.
Liddle’s delivery has a delicious sneering quality to it, a curled upper lip, a raised eyebrow and a thousand-yard stare as he spits out the lyrics:
Breaking into heaven is your birthright Sonny Jim
Do you think I’d waste space and time thinking about sin?
Breaking into heaven is your birthright Sonny Jim
The pearly gates won’t open baby kick that fucker in
Liddle says the song is about:
…breaking in and subverting the centres of power that have been used to author our fates en masse, stealing the pen back from the stealer and sprawling a First Nations story and future across the heavens above
Indeed the entire delivery is filled with a sense of redemptive anger: a turbo charged declaration of resilience and empowerment. The accompanying video directed by Liddle and Joshua Tate, is as visceral and cathartic as the track: a spoken word declaration followed by swirling coordinated movements, a paramilitary dance of resistance and pride and the band in a whirling dervish of a performance.
The video was inspired by films like Asteroid City and 2001: A Space Odyssey, shot in one continuous drone shot at the Scenic Rim Aerodrome in Kooralbyn that sees Blakfullas breaking into heaven via propeller plane, and features First Nations dance company Karul Projects and a powerful opening monologue by Kamilaroi activist and artist Uncle Richard Bell.
Without a doubt one of the tracks of the year so far. It has all the razor blade cutting edge of bands like Fontaines D.C., Idles or The Murder Capital: passionate, honest and angry with a blinding sense of justice and poetry interlinked.
‘Breaking Into Heaven’ is out today and you can download and stream it here.
Feature Photograph: Joshua Tate
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