This album of jittery post-punk and sweeping trip-hop is so ambitious, it’s little wonder one-time soap actor Ebony Bones has only made three of them in 10 years. Not only does she write and produce all of the tracks, there is orchestral input from the Beijing Philharmonic and a searing lyric sheet that addresses injustice against black people across the diaspora. It starts ponderously – the four-note theme of the two opening tracks is reminiscent of a Bernard Herrmann or Clint Mansell score, but this basic, undercooked melody is too weak to prop anything up. The true overture is Ghrelin Games, an Army of Me-esque industrial monster; its latent juke energy is teased out further on the even more impressive Kids of Coltan, an interrogation of mineral mining in the DRC.
The political focus switches to home on two subsequent tracks that link, via samples, Enoch Powell and the racists in kitchen-sink film Babylon to the Brexit vote, with Bones parroting “send ’em back” bigotry as the production putters along with fiendish energy. There is a more downbeat reflection on British racism in an excellent waltzing dub cover of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, voiced by a children’s choir. Although its poignant melody does once again underline how relatively middling Bones’s own top lines are, the idiosyncrasy of her music and the acid of her anger carry her through. The Beijing Philharmonic are finally put to good use on Bone of My Bones, Pt 2, a maximalist spiritual jazz symphony.
