Demilitarize [LP]

Nazar - Demilitarize [LP]

Demilitarize follows Nazar's remarkable 2020 debut Guerrilla which reprocessed Angolan kuduro music with rough textures field recordings and media clips telling a personal story of the civil war that exiled his family to Europe while his father a rebel General fought a losing battle in the jungle back home. After Guerrilla and an extended period of serious illness now Demilitarize is motivated by a reckoning with mortality and the flowering of new love turning the 'rough kuduro' of Guerrilla inside out.This is a deep sound world genuinely dreamy the arc of the album describing shedding the armour of trauma and surrendering to this new situation. A constant and unexpected aspect of Demilitarize is Nazar's gentle submerged vocal. Insistent and mantra-like it's like a cross between Elisabeth Frazer Arthur Russell and Frank Ocean and the music is fragile and opaque in response. The rhythms of kuduro are still here but move around his voice like fish around a swimmer while precise sound design illuminates from different angles. Chords spiral ripple and shoot through the beats giving tracks the loosest of settings; songs disassemble; vocals float off-centre. A1. Core A2. Anticipate A3. War Game A4. Mantra A5. Unlearn A6. Disarm B1. Open B2. Safe B3. Heal B4. DMZ