Stream: Imaad Wasif, ‘Far East’

Kevin Bronson on April 25th, 2017

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Singer, songwriter and explorer of the mystical Imaad Wasif has spent a career channeling his deepest thoughts and fears through the guitar, either in bands or as a solo auteur. He returns to his solo guise on June 16 to release the full-length, “Dzi,” his fourth album and first since 2011. First, the sound: Wasif’s psych-rock here is described as “dream metal,” its back-to-basics reverence for the riff achieved with a simple, spontaneous studio approach. The album, produced by Bobb Bruno of Best Coast, was recorded live on a Tascam Cassette 8-track. Wasif also calls it “the last Western rock album to integrate Indian raga sounds.” Second, the spirit: “Dzi” derives from “Bardo Thodol,” or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and translates to “splendor,” often referring to a type of stone bead worn as a spiritual amulet. The introduction to the album notes that it “may or may not contain references to love, paranoia and delusion.”

Whatever depths “Dzi” plumbs, it doesn’t figure to bore, judging from the primal riffs on the first single “Far East.” It’s another chapter in the serpentine story of an artist who, besides solo albums in 2006, ’08 and ’11, has engaged in slo-core with lowercase, explored psychedelic folk in Alaska!, played with Lou Barlow in the Folk Implosion, joined up with Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean in Grim Tower, played with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, co-wrote with Karen O for the soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” and, most recently, collaborated with Josh Garza and Tom Biller in EFG (Electric Flower Group), which released an EP last year. Wasif’s new album will be released via the new label Grey Market (No Joy, Presentable Corpse, Ave Negra and Oko Tygra).

||| Stream: “Far East”