Zun Zun Egui have just announced their second album, Shackles Gift, out on January 26 2015. The record is the follow-up to 2011’s Katang, and sees the Bristol five-piece, centred around the core duo of singer and guitarist Kushal Gaya and keyboardist Yoshino Shigihara, enlisting Fuck Buttons’ Andrew Hung on production duties. Their label Bella Union tell us it continues their wide-ranging approach, taking in tropical funk, stoner rock, post rock and disco, while Mauritius also figures prominently, with the record sparked by a trip the band took to Gaya’s native country to play their Independence Day celebrations last March. The band also put in their take on seggae, a blend of sega, Mauritian folk music, and reggae, on the LP track ‘Soul Scratching’.
Talking to us about distilling their broad influences in an interview around Katang‘s release, Gaya explained: "We wanted to push boundaries, but [then] we also wanted to make some cool fucking songs. We aren’t trying to be clever all the time and artists can be quite pretentious sometimes, in the sense that they believe the public or the listener has to make all the effort. For me, in terms of art, music is about communication."
They’ll be debuting some of the new material before the year’s out, playing London’s Shacklewell Arms on November 18; in advance of that, they’ve put up a taster of the LP in the shape of ‘I Want You To Know’ – have a listen above – and play the mix they put together for tQ here.
