Goat: World Music

Scandinavian tales of ethnographic oceans.

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Though this mysterious Swedish outfit’s backstory – a remote village, an ancient Voodoo curse, pagan idolatry, the channelling of ritual rhythms and a cult-like collective – reads part PR hokum and part wishful thinking, it’s as accurate a starting point as any to convey the intriguing mystical gumbo that lies within.

An astonishing cornucopia of influences and styles could read like a list of hashtags: garage rock, Afrobeat, kraut drone, bhangra, world folk, psych funk… At times, the immediate reference points appear to be Tinariwen jamming with Faust fronted by Natacha Atlas; at others, Amadou and Mariam kicking back with Amorphous Androgynous and Wayne Kramer.

The impossibly expansive musical range is stitched through with some haunting and afro-centric vocals from an unnamed female singer, and a planet-sized bag of tribal percussion and genre-perfect beats. Drop in a rich seam of fun and retro playfulness and you have an extraordinary debut.

Tim Batcup

Tim Batcup is a writer for Classic Rock magazine and Prog magazine. He's also the owner of Cover To Cover, Swansea's only independent bookshop, and a director of Storyopolis, a free children’s literacy project based at the Volcano Theatre, Swansea. He likes music, books and Crass.