Nazar

Angolan-Belgian producer Nazar refers to his intense, volatile style of experimental club music as “rough kuduro.” Taking influence from the upbeat dance style which has constantly evolved since the early ’90s, Nazar’s version of kuduro is dark, broken, and distorted, attempting to more accurately portray the atmosphere of the war-torn Angolan nation. Releases such as 2020′s Guerrilla sound much closer to grime and industrial than house, filled with brash, deconstructed rhythms, lyrics addressing massacres and dictatorship, and violent sounds such as guns cocking and explosions.
Nazar was born in Belgium after his family fled Angola during its 27-year civil war; his father, Alcides Sakala Simões, was a general in rebel group UNITA. Five years after the war ended, he moved to Luanda and reunited with his father. As a teenager, he began producing music on his father’s laptop which was influenced by the ecstatic rhythms of kuduro as well as the blown-out textures of French house duo Justice (his moniker is a reference to their 2005 single, “Waters of Nazareth”). After posting several tracks and remixes online during the first half of the 2010s, and eventually moving to England, his debut EP, Nihil, was released by British netlabel Generation Bass in 2015. Nazar’s music soon caught the attention of Kode9, who released the Enclave EP on Hyperdub in 2018, and included two of its tracks on Fabriclive 100, which he mixed with Burial. Nazar’s full-length debut Guerrilla, inspired by his father’s war memoir as well as his own experiences in Angola, appeared in 2020. ~ Paul Simpson