C/S012 THE SHA "S/T" C90

The Sha is a three piece collective made up of Matthew Earle, Adam Sussmann, and Christian Durham. Those names will seem familiar to those keeping up with the wealth of releases coming out on Earle’s Breakdance the Dawn imprint for the past decade plus. XNoBBQX, XWave, Love Chants, Sun of the Seventh Sister are just a few of the very many projects they dabble in. In The Sha the trio go into definitively psychedelic territory – sometimes of the rock variety, sometimes of a more experimental variety. On this self-titled cassette (their U.S. debut) the improvisations tend towards sustained repetition. They open the tape with an entrancing guitar number that stretches out over endless 1-2-1-2 drums, begging the question how one can maintain such a beat for such a prolonged time? And invoking notions of free and hippy rockers all the same. A later electronic and feedback drenched number is broken up by the occasional flourishes of harmonica and vocals – challenging the machines with simple acoustics to remind us that, however otherworldly it is, this music is in fact made by man. Limited to 75 copies.