Ak'Chamel, the Giver of Illness recently released A Mournful Kingdom of Sand. While I was listening to this, the bands latest, I wondered why I had overlooked sharing this incredible music here before now. Remedying that as you read on.
Ak'chamel is a cabalistic duo (or trio???) of Houston, Texas natives who prefer recording in ghost towns in the Chihuahuan Desert in far West Texas rather than the urban confines of modern Amerika. They play psyched-out desert exotica grooves armed with guitar, drums, bass, & multitudes of various ethnic & self-built instruments. They create an ensemble of atmospheres that recalls bands like Sun City Girls or Popol Vuh.
The shamanic group performs wearing homemade costumes & masks that places their aesthetics mid-point between the North American medicine men & Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain style. Ak'chamel create music drawing elements from the many traditions from cumbia to exotica, from black metal to Turkish, Anatolian, & Mauritanian music. Ak'chamel are true fourth world post-colonial appropriators. Murky lo-fi soundscapes of deep psychedelic folk that conjures the "fourth world of radical exotica", a place populated by old ghosts, forgotten magic, & discarded fetishes. This is music seemingly deriving from hacked pirate radio waves encircling the earth with fear & static, penetrating language, gender, mutation…to the core.
Much of their newer releases are available over at bandcamp. Transmissions from Boshqa & The Totemist I highly recommend but, behold, their latest - A Mournful Kingdom of Sand is a revelation. Here are a few of the bands earliest releases.
Irrevocable from Conception
Underworld Sweat Bath
Kohakawa Iyathtokyai
Weightlessness in the U.F.O. Corridor
Nahuati Tonalli
Swallowing the Damned
A Ceremonial Harvest (intro)
Pussy Gloating the Give
El Carretero
Death Was on You from the Moment of Birth
Virgen del Mercedes
Slalom (Ennio Morricone)
Mountain of the Sleeping Lady
The Other Side of the Dark Waters
Inrto/Devourer of Stars
Floating Rugs of Dakar
Evil Dark Face
Dos Gardenias
Yaje Chant
Funeral Fog
note:Tracks 1,3,&6 recorded live at Rudyard's; tracks 2&5 recorded live at a campfire performance; track 4 recorded live at Super Happy Fun Land.
As a bonus, here is an hour's worth of juju as Ak'chamel continue their sonic assault on the false gods of neoliberalism with a stunning collection of unreleased tape samples & miscellaneous recordings from their archives.
Enjoy,
NØ
