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PREORDER
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ARTIST
TITLE
Buzz' Ayaz
FORMAT
CD
LABEL
CATALOG #
GB 151CD
GB 151CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/30/2024
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Hailing from Cyprus's divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz' Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, '70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism. The band members come from both sides of the capital's divide, and the music found on Buzz' Ayaz is a deliberate attempt to give a voice to the city as a whole. A mercurial sound that echoes above the concrete walls and checkpoints. Cyprus is a holiday destination for people from all over Europe, a sunny, blue-sea island in the Eastern Mediterranean with a proud, ancient history. But it's also a divided island, with longstanding political tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations. Yet, inevitably in a small place, the two cultures intertwine. Walk the streets of Nicosia, the divided capital, and you'll hear Greek rembetiko alongside Turkish pop, Anatolian psychedelia next to Western rock. That urban mix of sounds he heard each day put a spark in Antonis Antoniou's head. With his new band, Buzz' Ayaz, that spark has caught fire, making Cypriot music that strides between decades and continents, electric and organic. The results on their eponymous debut album holds a barely contained wildness -- and a bass clarinet. Buzz' Ayaz carries a big sound, a punchy heaviness that draws from ʼ60s and ʼ70s rock, but stirring it up with all the differing sounds of Cyprus that Antoniou has known all his life. The recording captures the energy of Buzz' Ayaz, with all the rawness and sweat of performance, coated with urban grit. But there's far more to this than power; Buzz' Ayaz prickles with intelligence, invention and imagination. Buzz' Ayaz is the electric sound of modern Cyprus, the musical bridge that spans worlds. It's music that keeps Antoniou's blood racing, the sound in his head coming to life. The roots of Buzz' Ayaz are in Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and throughout the Levant, but they meld together on the streets of Nicosia. "I hope," Antoniou says, "that the reach is infinite."
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