black hawk - moments

Black Hawk 

Moments
self-released; 2017

3.8 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

The story of Black Hawk sounds like the narrative of a movie. He explains that he is a traveler who has a love for music. On one of his trips to Peru his teacher named him Black Hawk while working in the Amazon forest. His experience working with medical and visionary plants influenced the lyrics to his song.

Black Hawk was working on shamanic trance music and traditional music but fell back in love with the music that inspired him to travel in the first place - classic rock. He released Moments which is more or less a homage to classic rock. 

There were some pretty obvious influences and I think the most overt was The Doors. You can hear it in the music but you can also hear it in his inflection. There were certainly some lines he sung that reminded me of Jim Morrison.

Moments is a thick album. It contains thirteen tracks and the songs are pretty dense with instrumentation. He opens with “I can see you” which sounded like a mixture of The Doors and Pink Floyd to my ears. The production and recording quality sounds great. No complaints there. It’s a catchy song while also sounding pretty epic. The background vocals were a nice element along with the organ. 

Up next is “All We Are” which is a rambling song with a good amount of energy while “Freedom” is a bluesy number leaving a good amount of space for his vocals. Up to this point his lyrics are broad and line up exactly with his overall image, album cover and story. The themes can feel cosmic existential, and even politically driven. All the topics seem appropriate for today's climate but were really explored in the late ’60s. 

As the album progresses there are really some great songs.  “Four winds,” “My way” and “Gotta let go” were the standouts. 

On the Bandcamp page it says Moments is a contemporary version of how classic rock may sound. In all honesty the music just felt like an extension of the sounds from the ’60s and ’70s. I never once heard FKA twigs or Arca next level type production on these songs. That being said there are some songs you don’t want to miss. 

​Overall, I enjoyed a majority of the album and a couple of songs really stuck out to me. Recommended.

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