Record Highlight — Xenat-Ra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While many bands claim to be eclectic, Xenat-Ra truly lives it. Based in Corvallis, OR, Xenat-Ra is the result of years of shared musical experiences and a rich sonic vocabulary. Xenat-Ra owes allegiance to no particular genre, borrowing sounds from the fringes of hip hop, jazz, progressive rock, dub, metal and any other style that crosses their path. The sound can be spacious or dense, freely improvised or strictly composed, deeply funky or aggressively atonal, all topped by Monk Metz’ rapid-fire, often surreal, poetry. All original material is collectively composed and arranged. Xenat-Ra also pays tribute to a wide range of artists by covering and often radically re-arranging their material, treating Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun as a free jazz ballad/samba, covering Kraftwerk as a boogaloo, merging an Old Dirty Bastard hit with a Thelonius Monk jazz standard, or covering John Zorn, Led Zeppelin, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Weather Report, Public Enemy, Sun Ra, and Slayer, among others.

The band has been working on its new record, Science for the Soundman for over two years, and they have now shipped.  Hit up the record release show on October 6 if you are able!