Sweetback – Sweetback

On Sweetback, Stuart Matthewman on guitar and saxophone, Andrew Hale on keyboards, and Paul Denman on bass step away from Sade Adu without entirely abandoning the language they built alongside her. Space, sensuality, and minimalism remain, but they no longer necessarily lead toward a song. Without a voice destined to remain at the center, the three musicians turn what once surrounded Adu into the very subject of the album.

“Gaze” establishes this from the outset. Amel Larrieux’s voice hangs suspended among piano, saxophone, synthesizers, and echoes that seem to extend each sound beyond its point of origin. There is something recognizable in the way space is handled, but Sweetback immediately begins to reshape it: dub, soul, jazz, trip-hop, and electronic music move in and out without claiming boundaries of their own.

That freedom also explains the decision not to replace Adu with a single singer. Larrieux returns on “You Will Rise,” Maxwell lends his voice to “Softly Softly,” Leroy Osbourne interprets “Hope She’ll Be Happier,” and Bahamadi introduces another cadence on “Au Natural.” Each presence momentarily alters the group’s identity, and when the voices disappear, instrumental pieces such as “Chord” reveal just how much depth Matthewman, Hale, and Denman can create without needing to fill the space.

The production uses atmosphere as part of the composition: reverberation, silence, programming, and acoustic instruments function not as decoration, but as different ways of altering our perception of distance.

Perhaps that is why Sweetback retains a quality that remains difficult to pin down even three decades later. Its music clearly belongs to 1996 and, at the same time, seems remarkably uninterested in proving it. Matthewman, Hale, and Denman discovered that what they had built behind one of the most recognizable voices of their generation could also stand when the center was left empty. Rather than occupy it, they decided to explore every corner of the emptiness.