Kevin Bronson on July 18th, 2018

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“Some people have religion as a way to get through a tragedy, I have this music,” Imaad Wasif says in introducing his latest album, “Great Eastern Sun.” “I’ve been holding on to these recordings for so long thinking I’d be able to bury the feelings, but it’s all been gnawing away at me. I realized that the only way I’m going to get through it is to let go.”

The album is a collection of home recordings from 2012. Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) plays drums, Bobb Bruno (Best Coast) contributes bass and Wasif plays his virtuosic guitars, as well as santoor, sitar, harmonium, piano and synths. The sound is primitive psychedelic folk — or in pure emotional terms, a haunting ache. The songs remained shelved because Wasif felt they were too dark and too personal. Coming from a songwriter whose mystical meanderings took him through deep, dark waters on his first four albums (2017’s “Dzi,” 2009’s “The Voidist,” 2008’s “Strange Hexes” and 2006’s self-titled album), that is saying something.

“The album’s release signifies an emergence from a cocoon,” Wasif says now.

Jeff Hassay directed the video for album’s closing track, “Unhinged,” which features Wasif chanting the mantra “I am becoming what I am becoming” over a foreboding web of instrumentation. Says Hassay: “It’s basically a psychedelic Andy Warhol screen test with Imaad casting a song spell.”

“Great Eastern Sun” is available digitally or on limited-edition vinyl from Nomad Eel Records.

||| Watch: The video for “Unhinged”

||| Previously: “Carry the Scar,” “Far East”