Historically, the Brussels DJ was more of a behind-the-scenes figure, coming up with one compelling beat after another in the manner of producers like Timbaland.
The astrology-themed mixtapes that initially made his reputation in the mid-2010s are pure collage. And just before the pandemic hit, he released a collection entitled A Book of 100 Spiritual Beats, short tracks begging to be repurposed.
With Faith in the Unknown, the breadth and depth of ShunGu’s music shine as never before. Even though he relies on collaborators to rap or sing on the album’s tracks, his deft weaving of myriad samples takes centre stage.
The opening bars of “Thin Lie” give the impression of being recorded underwater. Even after Chester Watson’s voice comes in, his words are subdued. It seems as though the whole song could be washed away at any moment.
On “Did You Hear the News”, Ruqqiyah’s cursive vocals dart in and out of a musical bed featuring the crackle and hiss of what sounds like a sample made from dirty vinyl. It’s hard to imagine a more relaxed way for ShunGu to signal affinity for old-school hip-hop.
Faith in the Unknown’s final number begins with the sort of whooshing sound that stood for outer space in the era when putting human beings on the moon was a goal instead of a distant memory. The notes of a vibraphone follow, doubling down on the midcentury modern effect, with everything on the track quivering slightly out of pitch, like a cassette tape played a few too many times.
Even on a song like “Serti Dial”, where Blue Navy’s sport-centred verses demand the limelight, ShunGu’s unctuous rhythm section refuses to be ignored, countering the rapper’s mild boastfulness with an almost transcendental chill.
As these examples suggest, ShunGu’s work avoids locating itself in a specific time. If someone told you that the album dates from the late 1990s, you would be hard-pressed to find proof that it doesn’t.
But Faith in the Unknown also doesn’t try to provoke a nostalgic response. Its signifiers of pastness are too seamlessly melded together to call to mind a specific period.
Part of that has to do with the samples ShunGu foregrounds.
Although most recall the 1970s and 1980s, they steer clear of sources that are easy to identify. Especially intriguing are the snippets of smooth jazz and funk, which take the edge off those genres in order to promote serenity at all costs.
ShunGu’s beds repudiate tension with a paradoxical intensity, recalling the music played in hotel lounges and the soundtracks to corporate promotional videos. You can almost smell the spaces they conjure, perfumed by liquor, cigarette smoke, and ennui.
Sometimes Faith in the Unknown calls to mind the so-called “City Pop” that scored Japan’s rise to global dominance in the 1980s, music designed to make people who were working much too long and hard pause to take pleasure in their collective achievement.
For those listeners whose primary exposure to hip-hop aesthetics is brash, bold tracks that yell in your face, the album’s muted quality may seem peculiar.
This approach to sampling has a practical side. Clearing a recognisable fragment from a soul hit tends to be a lot more expensive than one taken from tracks that aspired to anonymity.
In ShunGu’s case, however, artistic imperatives take precedence. It’s as if he had put this album together on a dare, trying to turn militantly boring background music into something that commands attention.
“These songs are conversations,” he remarks in the album’s liner notes. “Not just between me and the artists, but between worlds, eras, and ways of feeling.”
At a time when the pernicious spread of AI threatens to make historical context hopelessly irrelevant, exacerbating a trend already perceptible in the way songs are used on TikTok, it’s hard to sustain such a conversation without forgetting who is speaking to whom.
Maybe that’s why ShunGu uses the term “creative risk” to describe the project. And why he emphasises that it is “very human” and “rooted in trust”.
Working together is hard. But trying to work apart is folly at a time when the nature of collaboration itself is undergoing irrevocable transformation.
As the album’s title indicates, there is a spiritual dimension to many of the songs on Faith in the Unknown.
This doesn’t mean that ShunGu is giving a particular religious tradition the hard sell. Rather, he and the other artists who contributed to the record make a soft yet insistent case for letting go, conceding that there are many things we cannot know and even fewer we can control.
Faced with that uncertainty, we must lean on what we have in common, the ties that bind us together.
Music doesn’t have to be overtly political to communicate a message with political implications. The smooth surfaces of Faith in the Unknown belie the exertion required to keep that chill vibe going.
Photograph courtesy of mikecarrick. Published under a Creative Commons license.
