Maximalist minimalism at its most disorienting. Spectral resonances, structural defiance and a multitude of instruments converge into a blend of geographically displaced psychedelic ambience that refuses to sit still.
Released via World of Echo on 3rd October, Baghali marks Jaan’s first outing with the label, a deeply personal album compiled over a year of constant movement. The project itself is shrouded in deliberate mystery: Jaan operates as a collective of one, an anonymous experimental sonic alchemist moving between Greenland, the Middle East and Europe, with frequent collaborators Lisqa, Mashid and Schneorr N. serving as local hubs for creative exchange.
This wilful obscurity serves a purpose: full focus on the actual music. Jaan’s aesthetic draws from the fringes of pure improvisation, organised chaos, minimal composition, lo-fi electronics and Italian spaghetti westerns, all filtered through a DIY sensibility. The influences are clear: the exploratory spirit of Brian Eno‘s more experimental work, the discreet poeticism of the Cat People soundtrack, and the raw authenticity of home-recorded archives.
Baghali was forged in transit while trapped in snowstorms, waiting for cancelled flights, stuck in stalled journeys. It comprises diary snippets, roadside recordings, abandoned buildings, garden ruins, vast deserts and focused studio sessions. The result is a collage-like narrative steeped in non-linear storytelling, where broken memories, displacement and occasional yearning for irretrievable moments collide with hope, wonderment and flashes of vivid colour seeping through fractured walls.
Opening track ‘Scented Feathers’ establishes the album’s uncanny aesthetic immediately, fusing throbbing synthesis with a singular guiro percussive element. The record feels otherworldly from the outset, wrapped in shifting, mountainous soundscapes that possess a decayed quality, like physical artefacts eroding in the thin atmosphere of high altitude.
The nomadic, geographically restless nature of this release permeates its rhythms. There are tribalistic moments of percussive bliss and passages of world music cacophony. Despite this diversity, the sounds are unified by a collective intent to transport and transcend. Whether manifesting as ethereal yet weathered landscapes engulfing majestic natural vistas or grounding themselves in the life and activity of bustling bazaars, these compositions evoke Eastern sensibilities with remarkable authenticity. ‘JuJu’ delivers all-consuming atmospheric expanses, whilst ‘Purple Watermelon’ captures the hustle and bustle of simpler urban environments. This is instrumental music speaking a universal language.
Horns call and respond, strings are strummed with purpose, and synths envelope listeners in waves. This is ambient music with ADHD. The attempt to float serenely exists, but an uncontrollable compulsion for freedom and activity constantly intervenes, pushing minimalist intentions into territory that marries diverse instrumentation with stripped-back rhythmic elements. If Brian Eno‘s Ambient 1: Music for Airports does what it says on the tin, it would be fair to give Jaan’s Baghali the alternative title “Ambient 2: Music for the Hills of Morocco”. If the hills of Morocco are your jam, then you may just know what I’m talking about.
Jaan weaves home-made instruments, old tape loops, broken synths, beat-up reeds, dusty beatboxes and the occasional doom guitar squall into a tapestry of fractured sound. Tracks follow their own inherent logic rather than conventional formats. Sounds crash in and out; field recordings place the listener firmly in an environment before throwing multiple perspectives at once. Individual elements like a wandering clarinet, a lone mandolin, a beat simultaneously out of place yet perfectly positioned slowly walk in and out, doing their thing.
Overt human activity appears not through performance but via sampled environments that wander through the record. Processed vocal chatter and environmental sounds filter through the music, often transmuting into unpredictable segments of psychedelia. Take ‘Pomegranate Garden’ and its sitar-led rhythmic psychedelia paired with field recordings. The music talks without words and flies without wings.
The album is alive: it breathes, takes wrong turns, gets lost, somehow finds its way again, effortless and with a unique sense of space and flow. Closing track ‘Velesh Kon’ finds a lock groove and commits to it for seven minutes of worldly, wondrous music. When Ben Frost abandons Iceland for Greenland and takes zero instruments with him, this is the record he is going to make.
Baghali is the work of a lone individual, crudely recorded and purposefully so. There are moments of non-coherence and passages that sound as though they’ve gone straight from conception to tape. Improvisation comes with the territory in this style of music, and the limitations to this method are present.
Yet moments of beauty and wonder abound. The album’s collage-like aesthetic – compiled from snowstorms, cancelled flights and stalled rides – imbues it with a sense of displacement tempered by hope. There’s broken memory and fever-dream unrest, but also bright colours and wonderment pushing through the cracks. It’s fractured, alive and deeply evocative, operating on the fringes where organised chaos meets minimal composition, where Eastern mysticism meets lo-fi experimentation.
Baghali refuses easy categorisation, and therein lies its strength. It’s a record that demands active listening whilst simultaneously inviting passive drift. Maximalist minimalism that speaks a universal language through its geographically displaced, psychedelic ambience.
Baghali is available on vinyl (edition of 300) and digital via World of Echo and all streaming platforms.
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