Volume 1

The debut recordings from Naujawanan Baidar, the latest project of artist and musician N.R. Safi. With roots in the now-endangered sounds of 1970s Afghan cassette culture, Naujawanan Baidar filters the traditional music of Safi's paternal heritage through a labyrinth of buzzing drones, tape manipulation, and fuzz-drenched percussion. Traditional folk instruments (both acoustic and home-amplified) like the rubab, armonia, sorna, and tabla, twist and melt into blown-out electrical storms, proving that one does not necessarily need guitars or any other standard western instrumentation to channel the trance-like energy of rock and roll. Had the dusty backstreets of pre-war Kabul birthed an experimental music scene paralleling German's krautrock movement, one can imagine that the results might have sounded a little something like this.
These tracks were cut over the course of 2017 as a sort of sonic notebook, documenting the evolution of the project as it first took shape. Though the majority were originally conceived of as nothing more than demos or impressionistic sketches, the spontaneous and ramshackle approach of the tapes was eventually deemed more than befitting the spirit of the project. Keep an eye out for a second volume (coming soon on Radio Khiyābān) as well as the... first taste of proper Naujawanan Baidar studio recordings.
"The album is a sonic whirlwind; you feel you are between worlds, between tape players, turning in a trance of distorted melodies and ricocheting rhythms." - Scene Noise
"Far from a rehash of classical sounds but rather a re-imagined psychedelia emanating from a land and culture that us western fucks would be obliged to learn about outside of the contexts of conquest and geopolitics." - Plague of Jams more