Moshyura.
“Look out your door,” Moshyura says at the beginning of “Shepard / Bastion,” the first song off his expansive album The Mad King. His guitar, aided by a cajón, lays down a calm groove that he gets to croon over. But it’s all a prelude. Halfway through the song the groove kicks into a higher gear, the guitar starts pumping, and Moshyura slips into bar after bar. Near the end, he croons the hook: “I’m a shepherd, nobody gonna steal my flock.”
Among the many New Haven-based musical acts to emerge from the pandemic, Moshyura ranks as among the unique. He builds his songs on his guitar technique. His right hand moves fast across the strings, a bit like a flamenco player, though the sound is quite different — more raw and guttural. His left hand, meanwhile, can change position with every beat, resulting in a sound that feels restless and dense at the same time. As his hands work the instrument, he then zigs and zags between rapping and singing. There’s an explosive energy to it, as if it could fly apart at any moment, though it never does.
On the recording of The Mad King, this energy translates into a loping, swinging groove that carries the listener all the way through the album, like a train with no stops. Instead we’re taken on a long trip through Moshyura’s mind; The Mad King boasts 17 tracks, starting with the heavier rhythms of “Rain in Osaka,” the propulsive chants of “Decadence,” and the raspy lovesickness of “Power.”
“77,” coming about a third of the way through the album, uses effects on Moshyura’s voice to create one of the album’s most menacing tracks yet, while “Desire” finds Moshyura at his more playful in describing a complicated romance, while “Coup By Coup” is one of his most powerful vocal performances, turning on a dime from a soft croon to a gritty shout.
The rest of the album has more in store. “Blood” features one of the album’s jankiest rhythms, while “Wrong” finds Moshyura’s sound at perhaps its most cinematic and sinister. “Loco” returns to complex romantic territory. The train finally slows down for the album’s final destination, “Bones,” which spaces out the rhythm to let Moshyura send his voice sailing over the top.
Moshyura bursts at the seams with lyrical ideas and is relentless in his pursuit of a certain sound. That sound has elements of the old, stretching back to the acoustic blues of over a century ago. It also reaches into the acoustic music one finds in the Caribbean and West Africa. Inject a a heavy dose of hip hop and the product is Moshyura’s own. The Mad King delivers on the fun, ambitious proclamation of its title, announcing the arrival of an engrossing new musical act now making the rounds of New Haven’s stages; he’ll be at Best Video in Hamden on March 3 with Greg Eichler. Catch him while you can.