It’s another year, which means another SHAPE, the amorphous, prestigious music platform dedicated to highlighting whomever may be working to pioneer new sounds from across Europe. Fed by over a dozen festivals and creative hubs, this year Hungary’s UH Fest has nominated producer Új Bála to SHAPE — just in time, coincidentally, for them to drop a new album.
Maneki Necro & Friends is a wild record; its Bandcamp summary self-describes it as “the worst true hip-hop record ever,” which is a statement worth parsing and reflecting on. We reached out to Új Bála (born Gábor Kovács) for further thoughts on the piece:
the tracks are coming from the same track circle as the tracks from my previous two releases /Boka, Butcher’s Tears Dry Slower Than The Average One’s/, but pushing my sound into a more absurd and abstract dead end, where a group of imaginary creatures are trying to play their own version of well known genres such as hip-hop,punk or techno.
There is a certainly an absurdist quality to the music here and a sense that familiar sounds are being messed with in radical ways. The beats are wonky, the melodies feel covered in gunk, and there are recognizable, dueling ghettotech and noise influences at work. But it all gets twisted into something weirder, more piss-taking, at times scarier or fucked up. Kovács further notes that Maneki Necro is “not a concept record, every speculative aspect comes after the music.”
Tiny Mix Tapes is happy to be streaming Maneki Necro & Friends in its entirety right here. We encourage you to acquire the record through the artist’s Bandcamp and to keep an eye out for performance updates from UH Fest.
