I have never featured anything from Kazakhstan so it gives me a lot of pleasure to highlight music from that region, in this case, provided by Almaty-based band CROWDWORK. The act's latest release 'After Night' is a strange one, hard to define, but it sounds a little bit like putting Depeche Mode, Yello, Nine Inch Nails and The Chemical Brothers into a huge industrial cement mixer, then tipping the whole lot across a new-rave dancefloor.
In most cases, that sludge of influences would create something messy and ill-advised, however, the band make it work. Everything’s in here, including the kitchen sink: twitching bleeps, dive-bombing sonics, oddball samples, thrusting guitars and a punkish vocal attitude.
The track shape-shifts every 15 seconds, creating a restless, unstable rush that mirrors its themes of fear, displacement and 21st-century loneliness. Somewhere between dance-rock, Alternative-IDM and industrial aggression, echoes of the past emerge alongside contemporary spikes. It’s chaotic, confrontational and surprisingly likeable - a controlled explosion with a distinctly human pulse. An interesting insight into the music coming out of Kazakhstan.
LINK: band.link/after_night