https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ne0daPtSFiZ9kQ7iWbpYlWd3xJprdt1zQ

Hailing from Cyprus’s divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz’ Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, 70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism.

The band members come from both sides of the capital’s divide, and the music found on Buzz’ Ayaz is a deliberate attempt to give a voice to the city as a whole. A mercurial sound that echoes above the concrete walls and checkpoints.


Cyprus is a holiday destination for people from all over Europe, a sunny, blue-sea island in the Eastern Mediterranean with a proud, ancient history. But it’s also a divided island, with longstanding political tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations. Yet, inevitably in a small place, the two cultures intertwine. Walk the streets of Nicosia, the divided capital, and you’ll hear Greek rembetiko alongside Turkish pop, Anatolian psychedelia next to Western rock.

That urban mix of sounds he heard each day put a spark in Antonis Antoniou’s head. With his new band, Buzz’ Ayaz, that spark has caught fire, making Cypriot music that strides between decades and continents, electric and organic. The results on their eponymous debut album holds a barely contained wildness…and a bass clarinet.

“That’s the distinctive colour in our palette,” explains Antoniou, also the founder of the lauded Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke. “That was the sound in my ear for years. I was – and still am – a big fan of the American band Morphine, although they use baritone sax. The dynamic of the electrified bass clarinet drives the whole thing. Will Scott, who plays it, is British, he moved here a few years ago.......
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