Just as Covid began to lock the world down in 2020, Hyperdub released the wonderful debut of producer Nazar. Guerrilla was an album soaked in field recordings, harsh textures, narrative-creating media clips and reproduced kuduro music from Angola. Guerrilla was an album that told us about Nazar’s heritage which included civil war and exile. As befitting such subject matter, ‘Guerrilla’ was often a tough and disorienting listen and one, you can imagine, which would be difficult to reproduce. That is why, five years later, Nazar returns with an album that is far more intimate and lush sounding than its predecessor.
Influenced in parts by catching covid which brought out the latent tuberculosis that Nazar had been carrying since his days in Angola, and which left him seriously ill for a year, and the blossoming of a new romance, Demilitarize is an album that carries Nazar’s unique sound world stylings, softens the edges and transports the listener into a lysergic bubble of whispers, echoes and blurred images. As the title suggests, here is where Nazar lays down his arms and instead of fighting embraces love, longing and humanity. The album contains a loose narrative arc that follows the journey of someone freeing themselves by surrendering and the events that occur after this event with the gorgeous and unmooring Disarm being the album’s fork in the road moment as leading up to this track we are thrown around on a bed of underwater percussion and half-heard synths and after a clarity takes shape turning the second half of the album into a new form of electric soul music.
Demilitarize is the sound of love songs for the modern age. It is the sound of an artist embracing their future with the clarity that the double whammy of a new life and a serious illness can cause. The one element that really helps highlight this new outlook is the sound of Nazar’s vocals. Chopped up, submerged, reversed and muffled his voice acts like a guide and it helps you connect with the music on a far deeper emotional level. There will be comparisons to Arthur Russel or Frank Ocean and whilst these are most certainly valid, it is with the producer Actress that Nazar has most in common as both are capable of making the most off-kilter rhythms and confused soundscapes sound like they come truly from the heart of the individual and not the head.
Demilitarize demands you give your time over to its world and really does benefit from listening via headphones. It is an album full of love and intelligence and it proves once again that in Nazar, Hyperdub have yet another artist on their label who will become a benchmark reference point for anyone seeking to marry electronics with emotions and flesh.
A beautiful listening experience.
Review by Simon Tucker
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List