Quinton Barnes – BLACK NOISE

'Just like I imagined / Just like I pictured it'. So opens Montreal singer and rapper Quinton Barnes' BLACK NOISE, a genre-fusing opus created in just over a week in collaboration with an assortment of free-jazz improvisationists and multi-instrumentalists. Such a proclamation, which he repeats throughout this dense record, might seem contradictory, but the spontaneity is by design.

For Barnes, his ruminations on religion, racism, artistry, sexuality and the nature of existence demand the grandest spectacle imaginable. On the title track, Barnes' androgynous vocals fight for primacy over funk bass, dissonant trumpets, tremolo strings and syncopated guitar lines – imagine Frank Ocean jamming with The Mars Volta in exhausting fragments. On What Would Eastman Do? he moves between breathless multisyllabic rhyme bursts and impassioned melodies in the blink of an eye.

The highlight – also, the clearest insight into Barnes' psyche – is the unsettling nine-minute Black Orpheus. To expound on the limits that are imposed on Black cultural expression, he draws from the Greek mythogical figure who symbolised art's very power to transcend death. It is powerful, but in truth, it's the one track that doesn't feel unfinished, as Barnes' voice finally rises above the overwhelming mix that he's buried under throughout the album.

Listen to: Black Orpheus