Évohé Bègue

Geographically, this mysterious quintet hail from the south east of France but, sonically, they manifest as though from a bustling interzone where diverse cultures and traditions, ancient and modern, slam up against each other, creating a dense, disorientating and positively post-apocalyptic hurly-burly.

Crazed percussion performed on muffled hand drums and North African iron qaraqab (metal castanets) provide a driving energy but largely eschew discernible metre, instead stirring up haphazard, tumbling polyrhythms that imply an implacable forward motion. Various pipes and flutes float over the top in a narcotised haze, suggesting at one moment a Moroccan market square, at another a jaunty Italian accordion tarantella. Vocal yelps, cries and moans – often scuzzed up with rough electronic treatments – summon the lofty muezzin as much as the rowdy street hawker. The effect of all this is profoundly trance-inducing, with Évohé Bègue drawing on the spiritual ecstasy of Gnawa as much as the white-out excess of lo-fi noise.

Each track floats and bounces by as an unruly collage, guided by its own impenetrable logic and, indeed, the whole album seems to blend into one mind-melting visitation without borders. It’s suis generis, 21st-century psychedelia at its most arresting and imaginative. Take a trip.