Five Women Making Psychedelic Experimental Music You Should Know
Yazz Ahmed picks some inspirations...
*Yazz Ahmed* sits at the confluent between a host of different styles and approaches, merging differing aesthetics into something startlingly new.
A composer who jazz leanings are matched against her Middle Eastern heritage, Yazz Ahmed infuses this with striking electronics, resulting in a heady, transformative brew.
Her 2019 album 'Polyhymnia' was a striking work, one that operated on many different levels, and its ripples can still be felt.
A new remix EP is out now - well, it is Bandcamp Friday after all - and it finds a range of guest artists teasing out different facets within Yazz Ahmed's compositional sense.
With this in mind, Clash invited Yazz to pick out five women making psychedelic experimental music, and why we really ought to be listening to them...
<a data-cke-saved-href="https://yazzahmed.bandcamp.com/album/polyhymnia-remixed" href="https://yazzahmed.bandcamp.com/album/polyhymnia-remixed">Polyhymnia Remixed by Yazz Ahmed</a>
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*Lucidvox - 'Videnie/Dym' *
Lucidvox is a four-piece psychedelic rock band based in Moscow: Alina - vocals/flute, Nadezhda - drums, Galla - guitar, and Anna - bass. Influenced by Russian folk music, their songs are characterised by a certain mythical connection with nature.
The video to this song reminds me of the film The Wicker Man (1973) - very trippy and haunting. I love the moment when music kicks off into a fusion of Russian folk melody, balkan grooves and the traditional vibrato-free singing style.
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*Gaye Su Akyol - 'İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir' *
Inspired by the Turkish Psychedelic Rock of the 1970s, Gaye Su Akyol adds her own unique voice, modernising and reinventing this much loved music that she listened to as a child growing up in Istanbul.
The mix of traditional grooves and decorative melodic inflections deeply resonates with me, bringing up my own childhood memories of life in Bahrain.
The video is a lot of fun to watch and when she stops the bus to play a solo on the saz, I instantly think of She-Ra - the Princess of Power.
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*Nisennenmondai - 'A (Live At Clouds Hill)'*
An instrumental trio from Tokyo (Masako Takada - guitar, Yuri Zaikawa - bass, Sayaka Himeno - drums), create music that brings together classical minimalism and post punk, with elements of disco, creating an otherworldly and hypnotic sound.
Listening to this track, I enter a trance, where time and space cease to exist!
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*T.I.E. and The Love Process - 'Life Is A Waiting Game' *
T.I.E.’s music blends rock, free jazz, hip hop, spoken word and Tassû (the form of verbal jousting from Senegal) and has been described as ‘Afro-Space Poetry’. Animistic cosmogony is also an essential part of T.I.E's identity, and a source of daily inspiration for her.
I love the way she recites her lyrics, emphasised with heavy grooves and cosmic sounds, accompanied by a mesmerising and dizzying video.
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*Melody’s Echo Chamber - 'Desert Horse' *
Melody Prochet, is a Paris-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, melding together psychedelia, space-rock, dream-pop and electronica.
She explains that 'Desert Horse', from her album 'Bon Voyage', embodies her difficult life journey over last few years, through her own personal desert of heartaches, thirst, mirages, moving sands, disillusionment, and of becoming an adult woman in a mad world.
I love the musical journey of this piece and the Studio Ghibli style animation of the video.
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