Sun Araw is the recording project of Long Beach, California resident, Cameron Stallones, who also performs in Magic Lantern, the Not Not Fun garage soul dream team, Vibes, and an erstwhile incarnation of the celebrated ‘outsider Funkadelics’, Pocahaunted.
Augmented live by Nick Malkin, Araw’s blown up, largo funk bass lines, gunky Archimedean Farfisa spiral, tremulous plasma guitar blats, rapturously curly choral polyphonies and lucid swamp is a cinematographic safari that Pitchfork has described as ‘panoramic, dizzyingly huge’.
From the solarized surf splendor of ‘Beach Head’ – imbued with the littoral vibes of Neil Young’s ‘Zuma’ – to the Fela Kuti zones of ‘Heavy Deeds’ and the noir-like cruise through the ‘inter-dimensional back alleys, ghost cabs, and midnight-sweat locker rooms’ of ‘On Patrol’, Stallones conducts a radial dig on a panoply of fadeout, cultural artifacts, refuting the repose of endgame Chillwave.
While out on its own inner voyage, Araw navigates a sunburst tributary where Keith Hudson’s Pick a Dub meets a 70s jam between Terry Riley and Don Cherry and – as Stallones’ commissioned mixes for The Wire magazine and Rose Quartz blog reveal – commemorates the galloping trance-minimalism and exhaled mantras of Pharoah Sanders and brimming canopy ambiance and UFO Junkanoo blues of Exuma.
Witchuals: Voyage of the Rock Aliens, Ragam Thanam Pallavi, Straight Edge XXS.
