08/02/2025
Available now: vinyl LP & digital album (Sonorama L-117)
https://sonoramarecords.bandcamp.com/album/meets-the-world
"German jazz-rock collective Embryo has always lived on the fringes of musical convention, blending jazz improvisation with global influences long before "world music" was a genre. Now, a newly uncovered trove of recordings from 1979-80, "Embryo Meets the World", sheds fresh light on one of their most adventurous periods—a time when they ditched the European circuit for an epic road trip through Asia, capturing the raw energy of spontaneous cross-cultural collaboration. The album, pieced together from seven lost studio sessions recorded in Kabul, Essaouira, Cairo, and Athens, features Embryo jamming with an eclectic roster of musicians: members of the Kabul Radio Orchestra, Eritrean and Syrian oud players, and Iraqi singers. The result is a hypnotic blend of Eastern and Western styles, where Afghan folk melodies merge with jazz-rock rhythms and African and Middle Eastern tonalities collide in deeply intuitive improvisations." (krautrock endless, February 2025)
