Although I can see Ak'chamel drawing attention from your average occult driven soul, I'm rather fascinated by the mystery of the "radio shortwave broadcasts from unknown and un-invented places", which are the motif in this particular story. More so, because their eastern nostalgia takes me back to a miraculous summer drive along the Danube and through the Romanian Plain, where the car radio tuned in to a Turkish radio blasting crazy Arabic music.
This in turn took me back to a part of my early solypsist childhood spent in front of a fantastic old vacuum tube, hypnotized by it's magic eye, moving along the names of cities I couldn't yet read but I was sure doesn't really exist.
The thing that's hit me by the first track (and throughout) is the distance - the sound and it's matter can give you a sense of space, a space that's filled with stories, a space that's alive somewhere, somewhere in the desert, where society exists with meaning, where life rituals and other raw or sophisticated but all flavorful happenings come to a catastrophic ending.
"Fourth world music from a border state" made by "fourth world post-colonial appropriators", that's how the band describes itself, that's how Alan Bishop writes about it in the liner notes, and that's the reason it goes so well on Artetetra. All the above are clearly music freaks. Historically and geographically, the transmissions go from the Middle East to Baku, to Persia, to Africa to cumbia sicodelica, from the Secret Chiefs 3 to the Sun City Girls, from across the street to trance and transcendence. Talking about transcendence, Iancu Dumitrescu and Sorin Chifiriuc both became fascinated by electronics in the sixties the same way, through radio waves.
It can all turn to a cliche really fast when you come to think about it, and I don't even know if this is the case or not (it doesn't even matter), but this Texan band doesn't play your usual Arabic tunes. Not that I have a problem with caravans in the sunset and palm trees by the oasis, but Ak'chamel build and organic and haunting sound, where nostalgia hits full frontal, inexplicably if you don't think about it. With a psychedelic guitar that roams between fuzz, surf, exotica, metal, "drums, bass and various ethnic and self-built instruments" they can really twist a man's mind and make it imagine broken yet resilient civilizations and their twisted artifacts. Isn't that the present?
Tracklist:
A1. Transmissions From BoshqaA2. Amazonica Exotica
A3. Latent Defilements Session
A4. The Meteorites Conjure A Prophetic Overseer
A5. Ancestral Incest
A6. Desert Ghost Song
B1. Bhairvi
B2. Processionals of Mauka
B3. Bhataka Bhuta
B4. Spirit Radio
B5. Tarot Will Teach You