Nazar - Guerrilla '2020

Tracks list

One of the strongest debut albums weve heard in years, Nazar’s
‘Guerrilla’ is a record about the Angolan civil war that we reckon
will come to be one of the defining albums of 2020

Relaying the tragedy and terror of his family’s experience of war, Nazar
uses a highly distinctive sound design palette and manacled grasp of what he
calls “rough kuduro” rhythms to bring listeners deep into his
mindset. While essentially impressionistic, Nazar vividly dramatises the theatre
of war in a way that’s perhaps needless to say, authentic; drawing on his
parents’ first-hand accounts and his own familiarity of the war’s
aftermath, including his Rank General father’s writings and his
mother’s oral recollections, to supply a shocking record that
doesn’t shirk from the gore and adrenaline, while acknowledging
sensations of blissed relief and optimism amid its scrambled con-fusion of
feelings.

As previewed in 2018’s remarkable ‘Enclave’ EP,
Nazar’s singular sound naturally bears a strong relationship to the
Kuduro futurism of artists on Lisbon’s Príncipe label, however his use
of cinematic tropes and a visionary style of narrative arrangement distinguishes
his sound in its own lane. Setting the scene with the resigned negative ecstasy
of ‘Retaliation’, Nazar becomes a physical presence via his vocal
duet with Shannen SP, who returns from the ‘Enclave’ EP to supply
icy gynoid vox to his blunted rap in ‘Bunker’, before lead single
‘UN Sanctions’ comes off like Klein’s hauntological elegies
taken to the club, and the thrilling kuduro skirmish ’Immortal’
gives way to the contrasting, blissed succour of ‘Mother’ at the
LP’s heart. But that relief is short-lived as the album’s final
section stakes its message brutally clearly in the end scenes, running between
his ravenous ‘Arms Deal’ to the schizzy but exactingly disciplined
trample of ‘Why’, and the triumphant yet heartbroken denouement in
‘End Of Guerrilla’. 

Where Burial somehow bridged a sort of maudlin vibe with still glowing embers of
UK dance music in a style that became known as hauntology, Nazar follows to use
a similar technique to distill and connote the pathology of war and its
aftermath in a way that’s equally vital as a timeless expression of
contemporary concerns on how the past plays out in the present day.

Tracklist:
01. Nazar - Retaliation (3:28)
02. Nazar - Diverted (4:15)
03. Nazar - Bunker (3:51)
04. Nazar - UN Sanctions (4:09)
05. Nazar - FIM-92 Stinger (4:18)
06. Nazar - Immortal (5:37)
07. Nazar - Mother (3:50)
08. Nazar - Arms Deal (3:39)
09. Nazar - Why (4:16)
10. Nazar - Intercept (4:34)
11. Nazar - End Of Guerrilla (3:49)

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