Fixtures on the Bristol scene for several years, Zun Zun Egui, one of the UK’s best ‘unknown’ guitar bands, have finally released their debut album. The ten tracks of Katang - including the tonal minimalism of the title track, the reverberating, psychedelic wash of ‘Transport’ and, nearly every other track included - have immediately made them Bella Union’s best signings in yonkers. In short ZZE are like an English Battles, if said group were a futuristic Afrobeat/Tropicalia outfit instead of a cyber-age funk unit. Now you’d be right to blanch normally on hearing the word ‘Afrobeat’ - if this was some bunch of scruffy indie herberts who had just picked up a copy of Now That’s What I Call Music From Lagos Vol. One a year after abandoning being electro futurists in tin foil with Micro Korgs and two years after abandoning playing top hat urchin rock in Camden town. But ZZE are all stone to the bone and feature the space carving liquid bass of Luke Mosse, berserk guitarist Kushal Gaya who sings in a mix of French, English, Creole, Japanese and what is presumably some kind of made up language full of plosive vowels and ear stabbing consonants. Also lending invaluable musical assistance are guitarist/singer Yoshino Shigihara – also the band’s artist and designer – and hyper inventive sticksman Matthew Jones. Katang is a collision of astounding jazz rock fusion flourishes, ruptures of sickening noise, megalithic hooks and serrated splashes of psych funk. ‘Dance Of The Crickets’ is like Television transported to Nigeria; while lead single ‘Fandango Fresh’ is like a serotonin drenched Fugazi. There are a couple of songs here which are merely good rather than brilliant but this is still one of the best debut albums you’ll hear all year. Anyway, we’ve got an interview with ZZE next week but in the meantime here is a brilliant mix that they’ve done for us.