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Concept
Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light
Summary
Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light is the second album by hip hop artist Divine Styler, released in 1992 on Giant Records. This album marked a significant change in Divine Styler's musical direction, incorporating a much broader range of styles and influences than 1989's Word Power. The album was a major-label release but, perhaps owing to its experimental nature, failed to meet sales expectations. Although largely regarded as a commercial failure, it has since developed a large cult following. Styler was signed to Giant because of Ice-T’s relationship with Warner Bros. Records.
Spiral Walls takes influence from a wide variety of music genres such as hip hop, rock, electronic, funk and even elements of spoken word and noise. AllMusic referred to the album as being like '"The Residents meets Funkadelic".
The majority of the album was produced and arranged by Divine Styler himself, which included him performing and processing all of the vocals, playing the guitar, drums (and drum programming), and keyboards, among other instruments. Due to the artist's dominance over the album's direction, it is generally regarded as a very introspective and personal album.
Since Divine Styler was at the time a recent convert to Sunni Islam, lyrical themes of the album mainly focus around the teachings of Islam and praise of Muhammad, with various spoken word pieces demonstrating this.
Retrospective reviews of the album were generally positive, perhaps surprisingly considering the uncompromising nature of the music that the album presented. In his review of the album for Allmusic, Ned Raggett wrote, Arguably the most undeservedly ignored hip hop release of the early ’90s, Spiral Walls is a mind-blowing, astonishing album that glitters like a dark jewel, equally nightmarish and astonishingly beautiful...Spiral Walls in the end is the album Prince could only wish to make in the ’90s—all-encompassing, spiritual, disturbing, and never, ever boring, a true lost classic.
The album also received praise from a number of non-professional sources.
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