Since 2006, when Iluminative began his career, the Australian rapper, singer-songwriter, and producer he has been consistent with his recorded output – four albums and eight mixtapes – and steadily built a fan base in the process.
Sacred Temple is the second single from his recent album Kundalini Rising, another dose of forcible rap that manages to espouse the virtues and rewards of spiritual self-care in a manner that seems to suggest quite the contrary, that is, by adopting an assortment of firm-edged musical passages, executions and melodramatic sounds that might best be suited to inflame rather than to inspire contemplation.
This declarative paean to the importance of oneness utilises not the distorted sizzle of guitars, as heard in Kundalini Rising, Iluminative’s previous single, but a series of string flourishes, a whole team of staccatos, marcatos and orchestral percussive stabs that jostle with Iluminative’s controlled vehemence, and a theme, verse, chorus cycle whose dynamic weight is perhaps just as persuasive as its melodic kind.
Body is a temple included in the trinity / includes the true ministry / the true you is spirit, spirit truly is infinity. Who can argue about infinity? What is it? Whatever it is, it is true, as is asserted here. And Iluminative’s recurrent method of communicating this idea of oneness, his impassioned voice resolute against the converging layers of instrumentation, the strings, the machine beats, claps etc., reflects the concordant nature of such a concept. Sacred Temple’s condensed intensity, of sound, of performance, of heady, philosophical denotations, merges with the act of listening.
‘‘ Sacred Temple’s condensed intensity, of sound, of performance, of heady, philosophical denotations, merges with the act of listening.
Can we digest all that Iluminative is disseminating? His track is, of course, a life-affirming reflexive action, a personal one. No doubt experience has filtered through to the act of creation; he has survived to tell his tale. One can sense this act of survival, the urgency recapitulated in the pulse, the door slam tonalities of the beat, in the portentous strains of the string section and the unrelenting push of the vocal. You might want to imagine what Iluminative is offering is an accurate indictment on severing your connection with the triumvirate of mind, body, spirit, that is, nature, in whatever form of separation that takes, but how would you know?
Iluminative here has erred on the side of caution, perhaps a result of dismissing such caution in the first place, who can know that. But in whatever way you imbibe Sacred Temple, it is above all else, a generally satisfying few minutes of musical expression that whisks you along on its fiery coat tails.
LISTEN TO iLUMiNATiVE HERE: