Japanese experimental music innovators SAICOBAB announce electrifying new album NRTYA (Thrill Jockey), out March 22nd, 2024. Featuring avant-garde trailblazer YoshimiO (OOIOO / Boredoms)  collaborating with fellow travelers from Japan’s world-renowned experimental music scene, the group channels the vital energy of living music traditions through ecstatic performance, exploring the shared roots between Japanese and Indian spiritual practices. NRTYA, Sanskrit for “dance”, speaks to the spiritual power of music and movement, the group crafting transcendent modern ragas that push from profoundly physical playing to higher planes of existence.

Alongside the album announcement, SAICOBAB shares the first single “Nachin Machine”. Erupting immediately into dense, hypnotic architectures of darting vocals and serpentine sitar, “Nachin Machine” opens up into a potent, bass-heavy stomp before slinking back into psychedelic whorls, offering a momentary glimpse of infinity spiraling inside the track’s intoxicating grooves. YoshimiO’s musical acrobatics are fully on display here, her voice shifting from strafing melodies one minute to percussive chants or primal howls the next.  

SAICOBAB brings together four musicians whose understanding of ancient musical forms is matched only by their thrilling contemporary resetting of such styles. YoshimiO’s experiments in this field are well documented, from OOIOO’s incorporation of Javanese gamelan into their kaleidoscopic soundworld, to Boredoms’ electrifying modern rituals. Multi-instrumentalist Yoshida Daikiti reveals the human hand that shapes living traditions, as much through his fluid playing as his own collection of handmade instruments, while percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Motoyuki “Hama” Hamamoto embodies the metaphysical power of rhythm. Together as SAICOBAB, the group exudes a true reverence for living musical traditions while remaining unbound by orthodoxy, fearlessly exploring the futuristic possibilities contained within ancient music.