Music / new releases
New release: ‘Mixed race shoegaze funk from the crystal cave’
Centenarian, the new record from Lawi Anywar, embraces and runs with the experimental multi-instrumentalist’s unique blend of funk, shoegaze and psychedelia.
It’s the second full length record from the artist who told Bristol24/7 that even as a child he was “jittery and enamoured with rhythm”.
Fittingly for an artist who has celebrated music as a way of finding and creating community, the album was produced with the help of luminaries of the Bristol independent music scene including Mike Griffiths aka Muncle, alt-folk violinist boci and in-demand drum machine Oli Cocup.
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It was recorded by Dom Mitchison of Spectres at Humm studios and the artwork came from Cousin Kula vocalist Elliot Ellison Holder, aka Tamasene.
Where Anywar’s first album comprised an emotional reaction to capitalism, Centenarian is a much more personal record that explores grief, trauma, anger, childhood and death through a series of locked-in, driving compositions that illuminate his dreamy pop-adjacent vocal tones and influences including prog, math-rock and soul.
It was inspired by conversations with his estranged father about the desire to live to 100 years old, and with his great aunt who lived to 104, and considers lingering regrets and the process of making peace with our mistakes before death.
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Alongside the multitude of styles present on the record there’s a groovy bass element which Anywar said has been ingrained since his move to Bristol from Dartmoor: “I owe my music’s emphasis on bass to dub which I experienced formatively in Bristol.
“I still remember first experiencing the immense bass of Teachings in Dub at Trinity, the windows rattling to the point where you’d be afraid they’d shatter. And secretly thinking how sick it would be if they did.”
Listen to Centenarian at lawi-anywar.bandcamp.com
Main image: @phenton.jf
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