Artists
Album Info
Release Date: 2023-03-31Labels: Valve Records, Lovers & Lollypops, Gandula, The Indian Runners, Moorworks, Keroxen, IN:EX
La MegaCobla + Tarta Relena + ZA! = ZA! & la TransMegaCoblaThese three elements come together with the purpose of portraying their own vision of Mediterranean music, filtered by distortion (so current in cognitive, social and identity terms) and psychedelia (so inevitable in an increasingly accelerated and saturated reality). A retro-futuristic journey from folk to free exploring the shores of the Mediterranean, claiming its power as a living core, never as a deadly border.
The TransMegaCobla fuses traditional Mediterranean culture -from buleria to kopanitsa, from gnaoua to sardana- with contemporary culture to create a fictional but deeply human and festive universe. Resurrecting the Phoenician language, the octet seeks common roots to fuse and remake them with contemporary molds such as rock, punk, free jazz and conducted improvisation. A timeless orchestra ready to invent, with real elements, a science-fiction Mediterranean in a parallel reality.
About the IN:EX Limited Cassette release: Limited edition 50 copies.
After the self-potted and black-fired tile made of clay taken from the local forest for the Indonesian band Senyawa and their decentralized release project and album ALKISAH IN:EX once again releases a recycled cassette in an eye-catching package. This time together with stonemason Till Apfel, Pauschal ist Pauschal at the sewing machine and a variety of remix-makers* from the mycelial-artistic environment of our label.
ZA! & TransMegaCobla have reinterpreted and sung Phoenician lore, accompanied by an equally unique vision of Mediterranean music. The Chemnitz-based label IN:EX, in turn, is releasing this album along with seven other labels scattered across the globe on cassette, encased in the volcanic sedimentary rock that has shaped this region and architecture around Chemnitz so much.
It sounds crazy and is de facto a game with different time levels that lead from the deepest past to the now and from there are sent out into the world again with a new momentum. The ingredients: An extinct culture that gave birth to our current alphabetic script, a 290-million-year-old volcanic rock, high-quality recycled cassettes from the late '70s, and a sound that fuses and reshapes traditional Mediterranean culture - from Buleria to Kopanitsa, from Gnaoua to Sardana - with the contemporary culture of rock, punk, free jazz and conducted improvisation. The aims is to create a fictional but deeply human and festive universe together. To envision...
The border-crossing poly-rock duo ZA! went into collaboration for this album with the wind quartet LaMegaCobla and the young acapella-trans-folk duo Tarta Relena to revive the Phoenician language with the vision of the Mediterranean as a unifying and non-separating cultural region, searching for common roots. Underlying this is an idea of the Mediterraneum as a center of life rather than a deadly frontier. Here cultural bridges are built and seemingly distant influences are woven into a new world of music and language.
Analogously, we turned to our special regional resources and sought cooperation: With the stonemason Till Apfel, working here, who took over the design and production of the stone cases, as well as the textile label Pauschal ist Pauschal with whom we produced the covers for the cassette from an old linen fabric. In this way, the architecture and textile history of this city combine with the contemporary sound of our label environment. Friends and associated artists contributed their own reinterpretations of the tracks from the TransMegaCobla album for the B-side of the cassette, creating yet another level of exchange and musical reflection.
The resulting work is a whimsical amalgam of stone and sound, texture and writing. Sung inscriptions on an obsolete medium, wrapped in a massive stone 290 million year old garment. In a sense, a fictitious parallel universe has been created in which, like a science fiction novel, categories of past and present are suspended, everything suddenly appears fluid and malleable, and in complex constellations is able to inspire each other in a forward-looking way. A call for transformation is heard in it, for rediscovery and reorientation - a reconsideration in the spirit of a different future.