Am 04. April erscheint passend zur Europatournee das neue Album Ak’chamels auf dem französischen Label Akuphone, auf dem auch die letzten drei Vinylveröfentlichungen der Amerikaner erschienen sind. Die sich selbst als „Fourth World Post-Colonial Cultural Cannibalists Circumcising The Foreskin of Enlightenment“ bezeichnende Band hat in den letzten Jahren auf zahlreichen Veröffentlichungen (neben Vinyl auch eine ganze Reihe von Tapes und CD-Rs) und Auftritten eine wilde und aufregende Musik gespielt, die wir hier kürzlich als „eine eigenwillige postapokalyptische Psychedelik mit schamanistischen Ritualen und dunklem Lo-Fi-Folk“ bezeichnet haben.
„Spiritually Unemployed“ enthält zehn Stücke. Titel wie „Paramasturbatory Delusions“ oder “My Little Pony Apocalypse Diorama Playset” verdeutlichen erneut Ak’chamels ganz eigenen Humor, Titel wie „Dreams Of A Dead Dreamer“ und „Malignantly Useless“ scheinen auf Thomas Ligotti zu verweisen.
Der Aufnahmeprozess des Albums wird von Bandseite wie folgt beschrieben: „Recorded in a makeshift adobe studio amid liminal border-zone ruins. Nocturnal treks along forgotten stretches near the U.S.-Mexico line, through derelict border outposts and sun-bleached vehicle husks, yielded unique recording opportunities: Ak’chamel dragged tape decks like sacrificial talismans, to capture gravel crunch, distant javalina fights, and unintentional EVP-like anomalies. Harvesting the psychic weight of migration, abandonment, and geopolitical limbo (e.g., Track 5: Serpent House). A half-broken oud, double-reed pipes, a battered hurdy-gurdy, and self-built spike fiddles were “tortured” pre-recording; strings detuned to unstable microtonal chaos, reeds soaked in questionable desert-sourced liquids, and instruments were kept outdoors to absorb ambient dew, dust, and wild temperature swings, ensuring every take carried an unpredictable, haunted instability. Vintage cassette decks and reel-to-reel units were powered through erratic, low-voltage setups (literally dying generators) which introduced random voltage drops, speed fluctuations, and ghostly dropouts mid-take — turning tracking into unpredictable spirit interventions. Fresh analog takes were dubbed onto tapes previously buried in arid soil throughout the hot day, then exhumed and played back while layering new overdubs; creating a palimpsest of temporal erosion where past decay bleeds into present performance. (e.g., Track 8: Nothin Wounded Goes Uphill)
Live performances were blasted through overloaded, malfunctioning analog chains (cranked cassette walkmans, battered spring reverbs filled with gravel, warped echo units), then physically “mauled” by running the tape through sandpaper-wrapped capstans or crushing segments underfoot before re-splicing — resulting in tracks that feel compressed, twisted, and ruptured. (e.g., Track 10: My Little Pony Apocalypse Diorama Playset)
Thus the desert claims its due: instruments tortured into prophecy, tapes interred and exhumed in chapels of malfunction. Spiritually Unemployed is the resulting artifact—a sonic border autopsy where enlightenment arrives not as a sealed doctrine but as an open infested wound.
Todo lo que toco se pudre bonito.”
@ Akuphone