Program

Qa'a (schlicht «Ka» ausgesprochen), benannt nach einem altägyptischen Pharao, ist eine moderne Psychedelic-Band aus der Untergrund-Szene Barcelonas. Ihre Musik weist rituelle, schamanistische Aspekte auf, intergriert tribales Trommeln und orientalische Elemente, ist aber genauso von dissonanten, avantgardistischen Momente und mit Elektronik versetzter Rockmusik durchzogen. So lässt der Sound des Quartetts auch keinen Zweifel an ihrer Liebe zu den New Yorkern Sonic Youth und vor allem der Krautrock-Legende Faust aufkommen. In deren Studio wurde denn auch ihr letztes, zweites Album produziert, und sie spielten diesen Sommer am Faust-eigenen «Klangbad»-Festival.
(Quelle: www.dampfzentrale.ch)

Okay, let's commence this month's Reviews Section with the latest epic offering from Barcelona's rotating ensemble Qa'a. For VESPRADA, released on Màgia Roja Records (www.magiaroja.net), is a 70-minute-plus masterpiece bulging with experimental missions, compelling grooves and exquisitely furious & fire-y musicianship. Indeed, from the moment that its mighty sonic Sun breaches the horizon, and scatters its horned Mithraic testosterone about the precincts of your branium's brow-temple, VESPRADA declares itself intent on Drawing Down & Drawing In only those already searching for Advanced Barbarian Descent into the Underworld. Undistilled this music most serpently is. Starting as it means to go on, VESPRADA commences with a bizarre nine-minute creature by the name of `Perpetu', a ritualistic piece of massed percussions & reeds somewhere in the same braying midrange as those Breton bombarde wielders Kevrenn Alré: this nine-minute head cleaner deploying blarting saxophones (definitely not saxes, note), massed concussions and apocalyptically Satanic belltone guitars, as analogue synthesizers fart and quibble, sawing and combing the nearground; elsewhere shamen gutteralize, chimp, primp & bark, chatter, screech, wail, whinny and groan/moan. Fuck me, this lot crack me up and this is the most breath-taking album opening I've encountered in a while. The full-on-ness of this opening escapade weren't no accident, neither, as evidenced by the words of guitarist Victor Hurtado, the ensemble's producer and editor, who comments:

"I always felt there was a secret musical genealogy of disparate records of religious qualities that had been interrupted for a while. I created Qa'a with the aim of continuing that genealogy."

Well, brothers & sisters, VESPRADO continues that precise genealogy. Which genealogy? Well, I'll tell ya, kiddies. VESPRADA's `From the Off' declaration of its own seething Worldview, nay, its own fierce Weltanshauung sets this record aside from still excellent others MORE PSYCHICALLY SLIGHT & less needy: imagine the Residents around FINGERPRINCE (during their Harry Partch PETALS FELL ON PETALUMA-styled massed commune percussion obsessions), the stentorian & brazen roar of ATEM-period T. Dream sprawling its orchestral percussion, Mellotron stabs'n'analogue candy across an even more rackety (and more otherly) EXILE ON MAIN STREET, over which has been ladled an evil smothering of Gris Gris Gumbo, a barbarian grind in the Sunburned Hand/Exuma tradition, an all pervasive groove of Faustian exultation. Truly, this music of Qa'a is rich; its greedy fingers - over fifty of them - reaching into those same sonic fountainheads as those inhabited by our most beloved Krautrockers. (Julian Cope, Head Heritage)

Julian Cope, Head Heritage

http://www.myspace.com/houseofqaa