Halleluwah

Eighteen minutes is a long time to stay inside a single piece of music, but Halleluwah earns every second through sheer rhythmic intelligence. Jaki Liebefeld's drumming is the architecture of the whole thing — polyrhythmic and relentless, drawing on African percussion traditions without appropriating them, building a pulse so strong that the rest of the band orbits it rather than driving it. The track breathes and contracts, sections of dense, interlocking guitar and keyboard giving way to sparse passages where only the rhythm section holds ground, and then the whole thing floods back with renewed intensity. Damo Suzuki moves through the song like a shaman conducting an invisible ritual, his vocals by turns ecstatic and eerily calm, improvising in real time against the band's improvisation, no single moment planned in advance. What it feels like is collective intelligence, five musicians so attuned to each other that decisions happen without deliberation. The emotional register is euphoric but also slightly unhinged, the joy of the groove shadowed by something restless and searching. This is the flagship track of Tago Mago, the record that rewired what rock music could mean in 1971, and it still sounds like nothing else — not nostalgic, not historical, but stubbornly alive. It belongs to late-night listening at high volume, windows open, all other obligations dissolved.