The eponymous début album from Sexwitch, a collaboration between Natasha Kahn (Bat For Lashes), TOY and producer Dan Carey, features six cover songs, mostly of tracks you will not have heard of, that will turn up little more than Sexwitch references from a Google search. In fact these songs seem to be the product of a search, as Carey and Kahn took a trawl through obscure 1970s psyche and folk music to find the material for this album. The songs are from Iran, Morocco, Thailand and the USA with the marginally better known 'War In Peace' taken from a solo album by Skip Spence, a one-time drummer with psyche masters Jefferson Airplane. It's a hypnotic record with prominent, layered drums and percussion that lead the tracks through an impression of tribalism, with lots of ambient synths, wailing vocals and heavily effected guitars for company. 'Ha Howa Ha Howa' comes from Morocco, originally sung by Cheikha Hanna Ouakki, it has a very primal feel to it and, besides the powerful groove of the drums, it's the deep bass line, that almost sounds like it has been bowed when the track breaks down, that really holds this piece together. Lyrical snatches of 'he addicted me and I addicted him' rise to the fore when Kahn isn't shrieking, and moaning – channelling her inner witch.

The following song, 'Helelyos', has a more direct feel to it, with a more staccato bass-line and jagged guitars, sounding more like themselves as Kahn sings of 'dark girls' going on adventures who 'don't want any strangers to come between us'. There is more obvious movement in this piece, more clearly distinct sections but the repeating groove from the rhythm section never seems to diminish. Somewhere between that insistent groove and Kahn's vocal exploration's I find myself reminded of Jeff Buckley's 'New Year's Prayer' from the sessions for his second unfinished album. Buckley's love of Pakistani Qawwali music (particularly Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) is well documented and a huge influence on his vocal style, which in turn was very influential to a lot of singers in the late 90s. It makes me wonder though, about the instinct to encounter music outside of our Western Pop and Folk traditions and reduce it to some key obvious traits. It's quite telling that we use the term 'World Music' to encompass music produced by a huge range of different cultures, and with this material Sexwitch can't help but tread their way through this difficult territory. Having said that I'm pretty sure it's us listeners who tend to be most guilty of this sort of musical reductionism: this is challenging music but it is very worthwhile to be challenged from time to time.

'Kassidat El Hakka' returns us to Morocco, this time the feel is much darker. There's a repeating guitar line, that never really goes away, just fades from the fore to the background throughout. Again the percussion is powerful and a deep droning bass-line makes your bowels shake. The groove is reminiscent of bhangra beats I've heard in the past, with a sort of repeating skip to the rhythm that is, again, quite hypnotic. There are waves of textured, sampled synth noise that seem to roll in and overwhelm things as the tension rises. The repeating refrain of “when I die I go back to where I was” points to an interesting take on reincarnation, life as a circular narrative… but sitting in my bedroom the entire eight minutes doesn't seem quite necessary and I lose a bit of interest after six of them. It's interesting to note that all of the songs for this album were recorded live in one session, with the band learning the songs in one day and recording them in one take. I imagine this music will really come to life in live performance, where you can really lose yourself in it. In fact when Natasha Kahn spoke to Pitchfork about the record before it's release she mentioned standing at the side of the stage watching Tame Impala and getting jealous at how the band played so well together live, psychically slowing down and speeding up. She wanted to capture some of that live feel for herself and escape the cerebral interruption that comes with sequencing beats on computers, something she has certainly achieved with Sexwitch.

With another feel altogether we get 'Lam Plearn Kiew Bao' from Thailand, originally recorded by Chanpen Sirithep in the 70s. The percussion takes more of a back-seat on this one, with the melodic instruments establishing a groove while cymbals and shakers mostly mark time, punctuated by regular break downs for a dance around the tom's. This is a more vocal, more lyrical track than the others and, in breaking from the repeating, tribal grooves of previous numbers, flies by – four minutes feel like two after what has come before and the song feels very much like an interlude. 'Ghoroobaa Ghashangan' comes in strong, establishing the most familiar sounding groove on the album so far. This one is again from pre-revolutionary Iran and features lots of very 70s sounding drumming and bass playing, with regular, dramatic stop-start moments that wouldn't sound out of place on a 70s cop show. The album closes with the aforementioned 'War In Peace'. It's a strange song, constantly seeming to be in the process of breaking down, rolling into lazy grooves that seem a little tighter and more deliberate in the hands of TOY than on the original but still never quite make it into solid back-beat territory. It's a great vocal performance from Kahn too, who ably inhabits the spirit of the song, even if that does make it sound even more like a long lost Jefferson Airplane number. It almost seems to end abruptly though, as though they weren't quite convinced about taking this one to the extremes they could have, giving the album the feeling it ends on an ellipsis rather than a full-stop… perhaps this is just the start of the Sexwitch journey!
Adam Kidd