Nazar
Demilitarize
Boomkat Product Review:
An AOTY '25, already?! Kuduro’s key outsider brilliantly defies and exceeds expectations on a properly extraordinary 2nd album, unfurling ideas of heritage, the present, and futurity in a singular feat of rhythmic ingenuity and psychoactive sound design, all wrapped up in impressionistic, songwriting storytelling - it’s his ‘Untrue’, and then some - massive RIYL Arca, Burial, Carrier, DJ NFox, Nídia, LA Timpa.
As one of modern electronic dance music’s standout visionaries of the past decade, Nazar has come to represent a hugely vital node of the Afro-diasporic rhizome, roundly renowned for his scintillating style of sound design and ravishing club pressure. With his second album ‘Demilitarize’ he shockingly defuses the aggression of his landmark debut album, 2020’s ‘Guerrilla’, with a lip-bitingly tight but expansive opus that introduces his remarkably mellifluous vocals into signature, club-derived soundscapes with a peerless, gobsmacking finesse.
A richly vivid injection of polychromatic colour and amorphous space into Nazar’s sound here unmistakably implies an optimistic upswing to his music, with finely chiselled arrangements of semi-glossolalic, lilting Portuguese vox and psych-soul abstraction swept in grid-messing meter that hails a heightened emotional intelligence and connotes a coming-to-terms-with - and going beyond - the references to his father’s role in the Angolan civil war which guided his first album.
The growing maturity and confidence in his expressively impressionistic style of musical world-building dizzyingly comes to the fore in ‘Demilitarized’ thru ten songs that deftly negotiate notions of inherited trauma and questions of where-to-next with a unique balance of contemporary yet heavily rooted fado-bloozy poignance and a coyly ambiguous nuance that suggests, not tells, its story with timeless tekkerz beyond his years.
In its flux of nervy rushes and lush alertness, it feels like the sort of album this generation and decade has been waiting for; a sensorial/sensurreal escape from reality, that likewise affirms something else is possible, crucially pushing the bar for others to follow in an era when so much high conceptualism masks a dearth of actual new ideas, pathos, or the thrill of new movements in dance music - a matter only compounded by dancers’ relatively increased detachment from physical spaces.
Allow us to bang on further, ‘cos this album so ideally crystallises so much good stuff at every turn, it’s worth the literal gush. From the steeply absorbing levels of concrète electronic shapeshifting in ‘Core’ or ‘Disarm’ - comparable to Philip Jeck or Parmegiani gone tarraxho - to the eye-widening dance songcraft of single cut, ‘Anticipate’, and thru the butterfly-belly romance of Sun Ra meets Tracey Chapman, via Arca and LA Timpa, as distilled in closer ‘DMZ’, he just leaves jaws on the ‘floor with an effortlessness that beggars belief.
With frankly unreal, knife artist’s sleight-of-hand he slices hearts and heads open with the breathtaking blend of urgent subs and thizzing duet harmony to ‘War Game’, and comes off like one of Burial’s vocaloids made flickering flesh in the holographic 2-step hyperjazz spirits of ‘Unlearn’ and ‘Safe’, whilst the likes of ‘Heal’ simply leave us in no doubt this guy on his own level entirely. Head-to-toe it’s tear-jerking, tendon-tweaking genius in effect, bound to leave us reeling for years to come. JFC what a record‽
E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L!
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Estimated Release Date: 25 April 2025
Please note that shipping dates for pre-orders are estimated and are subject to change
Boomkat Product Review:
An AOTY '25, already?! Kuduro’s key outsider brilliantly defies and exceeds expectations on a properly extraordinary 2nd album, unfurling ideas of heritage, the present, and futurity in a singular feat of rhythmic ingenuity and psychoactive sound design, all wrapped up in impressionistic, songwriting storytelling - it’s his ‘Untrue’, and then some - massive RIYL Arca, Burial, Carrier, DJ NFox, Nídia, LA Timpa.
As one of modern electronic dance music’s standout visionaries of the past decade, Nazar has come to represent a hugely vital node of the Afro-diasporic rhizome, roundly renowned for his scintillating style of sound design and ravishing club pressure. With his second album ‘Demilitarize’ he shockingly defuses the aggression of his landmark debut album, 2020’s ‘Guerrilla’, with a lip-bitingly tight but expansive opus that introduces his remarkably mellifluous vocals into signature, club-derived soundscapes with a peerless, gobsmacking finesse.
A richly vivid injection of polychromatic colour and amorphous space into Nazar’s sound here unmistakably implies an optimistic upswing to his music, with finely chiselled arrangements of semi-glossolalic, lilting Portuguese vox and psych-soul abstraction swept in grid-messing meter that hails a heightened emotional intelligence and connotes a coming-to-terms-with - and going beyond - the references to his father’s role in the Angolan civil war which guided his first album.
The growing maturity and confidence in his expressively impressionistic style of musical world-building dizzyingly comes to the fore in ‘Demilitarized’ thru ten songs that deftly negotiate notions of inherited trauma and questions of where-to-next with a unique balance of contemporary yet heavily rooted fado-bloozy poignance and a coyly ambiguous nuance that suggests, not tells, its story with timeless tekkerz beyond his years.
In its flux of nervy rushes and lush alertness, it feels like the sort of album this generation and decade has been waiting for; a sensorial/sensurreal escape from reality, that likewise affirms something else is possible, crucially pushing the bar for others to follow in an era when so much high conceptualism masks a dearth of actual new ideas, pathos, or the thrill of new movements in dance music - a matter only compounded by dancers’ relatively increased detachment from physical spaces.
Allow us to bang on further, ‘cos this album so ideally crystallises so much good stuff at every turn, it’s worth the literal gush. From the steeply absorbing levels of concrète electronic shapeshifting in ‘Core’ or ‘Disarm’ - comparable to Philip Jeck or Parmegiani gone tarraxho - to the eye-widening dance songcraft of single cut, ‘Anticipate’, and thru the butterfly-belly romance of Sun Ra meets Tracey Chapman, via Arca and LA Timpa, as distilled in closer ‘DMZ’, he just leaves jaws on the ‘floor with an effortlessness that beggars belief.
With frankly unreal, knife artist’s sleight-of-hand he slices hearts and heads open with the breathtaking blend of urgent subs and thizzing duet harmony to ‘War Game’, and comes off like one of Burial’s vocaloids made flickering flesh in the holographic 2-step hyperjazz spirits of ‘Unlearn’ and ‘Safe’, whilst the likes of ‘Heal’ simply leave us in no doubt this guy on his own level entirely. Head-to-toe it’s tear-jerking, tendon-tweaking genius in effect, bound to leave us reeling for years to come. JFC what a record‽
E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L!
Estimated Release Date: 25 April 2025
Please note that shipping dates for pre-orders are estimated and are subject to change
Boomkat Product Review:
An AOTY '25, already?! Kuduro’s key outsider brilliantly defies and exceeds expectations on a properly extraordinary 2nd album, unfurling ideas of heritage, the present, and futurity in a singular feat of rhythmic ingenuity and psychoactive sound design, all wrapped up in impressionistic, songwriting storytelling - it’s his ‘Untrue’, and then some - massive RIYL Arca, Burial, Carrier, DJ NFox, Nídia, LA Timpa.
As one of modern electronic dance music’s standout visionaries of the past decade, Nazar has come to represent a hugely vital node of the Afro-diasporic rhizome, roundly renowned for his scintillating style of sound design and ravishing club pressure. With his second album ‘Demilitarize’ he shockingly defuses the aggression of his landmark debut album, 2020’s ‘Guerrilla’, with a lip-bitingly tight but expansive opus that introduces his remarkably mellifluous vocals into signature, club-derived soundscapes with a peerless, gobsmacking finesse.
A richly vivid injection of polychromatic colour and amorphous space into Nazar’s sound here unmistakably implies an optimistic upswing to his music, with finely chiselled arrangements of semi-glossolalic, lilting Portuguese vox and psych-soul abstraction swept in grid-messing meter that hails a heightened emotional intelligence and connotes a coming-to-terms-with - and going beyond - the references to his father’s role in the Angolan civil war which guided his first album.
The growing maturity and confidence in his expressively impressionistic style of musical world-building dizzyingly comes to the fore in ‘Demilitarized’ thru ten songs that deftly negotiate notions of inherited trauma and questions of where-to-next with a unique balance of contemporary yet heavily rooted fado-bloozy poignance and a coyly ambiguous nuance that suggests, not tells, its story with timeless tekkerz beyond his years.
In its flux of nervy rushes and lush alertness, it feels like the sort of album this generation and decade has been waiting for; a sensorial/sensurreal escape from reality, that likewise affirms something else is possible, crucially pushing the bar for others to follow in an era when so much high conceptualism masks a dearth of actual new ideas, pathos, or the thrill of new movements in dance music - a matter only compounded by dancers’ relatively increased detachment from physical spaces.
Allow us to bang on further, ‘cos this album so ideally crystallises so much good stuff at every turn, it’s worth the literal gush. From the steeply absorbing levels of concrète electronic shapeshifting in ‘Core’ or ‘Disarm’ - comparable to Philip Jeck or Parmegiani gone tarraxho - to the eye-widening dance songcraft of single cut, ‘Anticipate’, and thru the butterfly-belly romance of Sun Ra meets Tracey Chapman, via Arca and LA Timpa, as distilled in closer ‘DMZ’, he just leaves jaws on the ‘floor with an effortlessness that beggars belief.
With frankly unreal, knife artist’s sleight-of-hand he slices hearts and heads open with the breathtaking blend of urgent subs and thizzing duet harmony to ‘War Game’, and comes off like one of Burial’s vocaloids made flickering flesh in the holographic 2-step hyperjazz spirits of ‘Unlearn’ and ‘Safe’, whilst the likes of ‘Heal’ simply leave us in no doubt this guy on his own level entirely. Head-to-toe it’s tear-jerking, tendon-tweaking genius in effect, bound to leave us reeling for years to come. JFC what a record‽
E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L!
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