Lion`s Drums is Marseilles-based producer, Harold Boue. Kagabas is his new album, which takes its name from the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Santa Marta, Columbia. The collection is both a document and celebration of Harold`s week spent exploring the jungles of the region under the guidance of the MAMA – the Kagabas` spiritual leaders. Despite having a track record with labels such as John Talabot`s highly respected Hivern Discs, Harold is self-releasing the album in order to plough 100% of profits made directly into the Nativa Organization – a charity aimed at helping to combat the ecological havoc wrought on the Kagabas` homeland by corporate logging and deforestation. The LP consists of respectfully processed field recordings of fauna and songs sung in Kogi – the Kagabas` mother tongue. They possess no written language, so their history and wisdom is passed down from generation to generation only through recitals – primarily by the MAMA. This tradition dating back 5, 000 years. Songs are offered as greetings to wild animals and the wild landscape, hence the titles here include Deer, and Snake. This communication with nature, this narration, these incantations and spells, are sometimes accompanied by beatless, ringing drone, and sometimes by racing, rapid metallic percussion – full of acidic twists. Rave with an ancient tribal rattle. It`s a suite of synths, sine waves, and story-telling, cicadas, birds, and laughter. Organic beats set at a balearic chug. It closes with the intimate crackle of campfire flames. The arrangements are simple, yet seductively soothing, uplifting, healing-trance-inducing. Forming a fragile calm spun out of gently dizzying fractals, and delicate drum ritual, summoning images of the northern most tip of South America at sunset. The closest – equally timeless – musical comparison I’ve got is that Waak Waak Djungi record that Efficient Space put out a few years back. At its peaks on, say, Water, and Aloutta (Hembra), yeah, it`s as perfect as that. 

You can order Lion`s Drums Kagabas directly – and contribute to the Nativa Organization – here.