Now available: the EP ‘BETTER IS GOLD’ from Enid Ze.

You can hear it via the platform of your choice at this link.

Enid Ze is a musical vision conceived and directed by Zimbabwean-born singer/songwriter Nyasha Chiundiza, produced and mixed by yours truly, with invaluable aid+participation from so many of my most dear musical collaborators. It is not lightly that I tell you: Nyasha is a visionary and an iconoclast. Here’s some words about the project from the man himself, but please don’t take his (or my) words for it. Check out the tracks. This is something else, and something wonderful. From NC:

enid ze is a continuation and reimagining of the Southern African tradition of Zamrock—W.I.T.C.H. Keith Mlevhu, Wells Fargo—where global pop and rock come to cohere in specific existential experiences of living many worlds at once. Listen to the panting on the title track “Better is Gold” and remember Letta Mbulu. When you hear “Marechera” recall modernist African writer Dambudzo Marechera’s poem, Punkpoem:

In the song

Are waterfruits;

In the plush and flow

Firestars eternally fixed.

Guitar strings lash

My back, draw blood –

The out of control voice

Skids shrieking across

Tarmac audiences.

When you hear “Shuwa” hear the word “sure” but also the waves on the beaches of Maputo, Mozambique. Or the beer gardens of downtown Harare. Also listen to how far home and how close it is, how unrest and rest lie together like a lion and lamb.

“Better is Gold” is about the condition of seeking more than you see—not in the future but in the things that you find along the way. “Better” is better than gold.