dragonchild’s BLACK from FPE Records is meditative, spiritual Ethio-futurism, spread across four one-sided LPs designed to be played simultaneously.

D.A. Mekonnen is a saxophone player, and the longtime leader of Debo Band, the acclaimed Ethiopian-American new-music ensemble. He is also an artist who thinks in cosmic terms, and for decades he has been thinking about the long and twisted history of the saxophone, and the noises it makes. BLACK, the first record he has produced as dragonchild, is the monumental result of that exploration: four one-sided albums, designed to be played simultaneously, creating an immersive and disorienting swarm of sound.

BLACK was inspired by a trio of Black visionaries: the Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, the nonconformist American artist Lonnie Holley, and the American activist and author adrienne maree brown. It is dedicated to Alice Coltrane, the American jazz visionary, but perhaps you can also he