Dwarfs Of East Agouza – Sasquatch Landslide LP

Preorder. Set for October 3rd, 2025. Ships when in stock.

“A psychedelic, motorik jam, with a palette made up of North African and Middle Eastern instruments, this is wonderful stuff.” – Loud & Quiet

Pick a small spot (a point) in front of you (a small knot of wood, a dog down the way). And tightly focus on this spot. And now slowly unfocus your gaze. Widen your gaze. Pan out without moving your eyes. Take it all in.

A smeared and pixelated surface, swelling of contour and light. (Monet’s seepages of light, Altman’s overlapping nomadic dialogue.) Once you have unfocused with little to no center of attention, slowly close your eyes. And please feel very free to notice the light. All of the light that your eyes knocked back as you dilated your focal point. This exercise can be repeated a few times. Unfocusing does not always come easily. And it is probably best to not put too much effort into it. Best to not employ too much pressure.

And we will not put too much pressure on this exercise to help us explain away the humidly, saturatedly psychedelic canopy of moan-‘n-twang and slackelastic-groove of The Dwarfs Of East Agouza’s Sasquatch Landslide.

Mitch Hedberg has a great joke about the Sasquatch: “I think Bigfoot is blurry. That’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry! And that’s extra scary to me, because there’s a large out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside.”

Sasquatch Landslide. A landslide of hazy configurations. Blurriness, far from a lack of detail, is an embroidering of detail, a horizontal expansion of surface and swarms of light. The name “Sasquatch” derives from the Salish word se’sxac, which means “wild men.” And Sasquatch Landslide is wild. Everything is unravelling. Offset. Décalage. A whole host of slippery tempos and pulses as the organs, guitars and saxophones loiter and lope over a skipping hop of beats, and everything emerges always mid-stream. It is all middle with no halfway point, no dead center, no bullseye. Everything twangs, moans, sweeps, slips, swings, skitters, slides, and grooves out of nowhere. And the almost-human voice with no mother-tongue.

There is something ecstatic (an elatedly miniscule frenzy) going on here but it is pushed beyond the ecstatic: a joyous-grotesque rolling right past trance to dance. Psychedelias appear out of the infra-spaces in between the apparitions and overlapping ‘regimes’ and registers—pushed and squeezed far beyond the recognizable. And these spaces groove joyously hard like some kind of illusive House music, houses completely submerged in molasses. BigFoot-work? (Oh my!) There is not a place to throw your anchor here in the furrowing humidity. That does, and it does, sound like some kind of landslide.

A psychedelic encounter is a brush with the marvel of otherness. The point from which we speak of other, becomes other itself, in an ever-storm of other-production that shreds ideas of knowing and understanding what we think is going on. Time unhinged from the clock. Space unhinged from the frame. An unpinpointing hallucination, a hot get-down, an untethered throw-down of oscillations, fiercely, joyously, exuberantly incomprehensible. Listening to Sasquatch Landslide, a wildly unhinged reverie.

Eric Chenaux and Mariette Cousty
Condat-sur-Ganaveix, February 2025

180gLP in 300gsm jacket + 300gsm inner, both printed LE-UV on reverse board. Includes DL card. Limited edition of 500.

CD in custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket + inner disc sleeve.

Sam Shalabi: Electric guitar
Maurice Louca: Keyboards, beats, electronics
Alan Bishop: Alto Saxophone, acoustic guitar, vocals

All tracks by The Dwarfs of East Agouza.

Recorded by Nene Baratto at Big Snuff Studio in Berlin.

Mixed by Jace Lasek at Break Glass in Montreal.

Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering.

Artwork by Mark Sullo. Design by Ian Ilavsky.

Thanks: Simon Wojan

 

Constellation, 2025. 180g Vinyl. Das Trio Maurice Louca , Alan Bishop & Sam Shalabi kehrt mit einem fokussierten Set aus rhythmischem Psych-Trance Improvisationen zurück: ihr erstes Album für Constellation, nach Veröffentlichungen auf Sub Rosa, Akuphone und Unrock.  Der Name “Sasquatch” leitet sich von dem Salish-Wort se’sxac ab, das “wilde Männer” bedeutet. Und Sasquatch Landslide ist wild. Dieser satte und feuchte psychedelische Baldachin aus Twang und Groove lässt sich nur schwer festhalten. Alles entwirrt sich. Versetzt. Décallage. Ein ganzes Heer von schlüpfrigen Tempi und Pulsen, während die Orgeln, Gitarren und Saxophone über einen hüpfenden Hopser von Beats schlendern, und alles taucht immer mitten im Strom auf. Alles ist mittendrin, es gibt keinen halben Punkt, keinen toten Punkt, keinen Volltreffer. Alles zuckt, stöhnt, fegt, rutscht, schaukelt, flitzt, gleitet und groovt aus dem Nichts. Und die fast menschliche Stimme, die keine Muttersprache hat. Da ist etwas Ekstatisches im Gange, aber es wird über das Ekstatische hinausgeschoben: eine freudige Groteske, die direkt an der Trance vorbei zum Tanz führt.