Another Sublime Frequencies offering, I basically picked this one from the catalog of 40 or so because it has "guitar" in the name, which so far has been the key to my enjoyment of otherwise fairly inaccessible, non-English-language music from here and there.
Good gamble! This is a style hatched in the 90's and this particular album was recorded in 2004 and 2007, so its a lot more recent than the other stuff, but it mostly sounds outside of time. The songs are buzzy and lo-fi, built on texture and repetition first and foremost, sounding like The Velvet Underground at their jammiest, or occasionally like Deerhunter or No Age at their most meditative. A simple beat and guitar line lay the basis (sounding both like things I've recorded, and things my World's Largest Band app cooked up, actually), but then its lots of little guitar flourishes, subtle shifts in tone, and lots of singing, ululations and hissing (?) It's totally hypnotic, occasionally meditative, occasionally breaking out into madcap, furious energy - the overblown distortions of Nadan Al Kazawnin are particularly mindblowing.
Once again, though, the female vocals are kind of annoying - I'm not trying to be closed-minded, but the actual sound is unpleasant when you're singing that high, it just sounds tinny and shrill. That complaint aside, this is an interesting listen. It's utterly different, having almost nothing in common with Western music other than the electric guitar itself, but it's still totally accessible. The vocals will probably keep this from being a frequent listen, but this is easily good enough for a 4/5
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