Mezar Pairs Ancestral Text with Tight Grooves on 'Under the Red Moon'

Bedouin blues quartet Mezar’s sound is full of hypnotic grooves and analog textures, drawing on Afro-Oriental musical traditions to inform their trance-inducing sonics. Released via Jordanian-Canadian label Keife Records, the band’s new live EP 'Under the Red Moon' arrives alongside a filmed video session that captures the band's air-tight chemistry. 

The EP extends the ground Mezar staked out on 2024's ‘Sohan’ a record following a Tuareg dreaming of becoming an astronaut that earned the band a showcase at MaMA Music & Convention, a Prix des Musiques d'Ici nomination, and backing from the Canada Council for the Arts. Where ‘Sohan' looked outward, 'Under the Red Moon' turns back toward the people standing under that same sky. The band's signature sound and Diwan-inspired texts remain an intricate pairing, but the live setting sharpens this dynamic into something more visceral.

The EP’s tracks split cleanly into two distinct moods. 'Sound of Tbal' and 'Four Revelations' occupy the meditative end of the spectrum, where hypnotic guitar lines run against atmospheric synths and wistful, unhurried vocals that feel closer to incantation than performance.

The second half pulls back toward the groove of the room. ‘Hadiya' is a looser, chill offering where locked-in drums allow the guitar and call-and-response vocals to drift effortlessly. ‘Mayou' takes that same energy into the daylight with organ-like pads, a genuinely euphoric guitar tone, and a groovy bassline that transforms the vocal into a collective singalong. From start to finish, 'Under the Red Moon' moves gracefully from trance to release, mirroring the EP’s own theme of an ending that carries the seed of renewal.