Tales of An Astral Voyager EP

Mzss is a producer from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and Tales of An Astral Voyager is his first release for the Washington, D.C. label 1432 R. The EP runs four tracks of afro house and arrives on limited 12" vinyl (edition of 30, packaged with a matching art poster) plus digital. The tags read afro house, tech house, neo-soul. The track titles read like a flight manifest: Plank Star, Enter the Black Hole, Galaxy Express, Multiverse.

Mzss is working a long tradition here, the one where the African diaspora treats outer space as actual territory, a place you can plot a course to. Sun Ra claimed Saturn as his birthplace and built a whole cosmology to get back; the Detroit techno futurists encoded escape velocity into the drum machine; Rammellzee theorized that letters themselves would one day arm and revolt. Mzss files his own flight plan through the kick drum. Galaxy Express keeps perfect departure time and abandons anyone still tying their shoes. By Multiverse the groove has quietly cloned itself, and each copy has one detail off: a hi-hat landing a hair early, a bassline that remembers a key the others forgot. You dance through the EP the way you walk through your own apartment in a dream, every room correct, every room subtly the wrong size. Then you notice the furniture has been rearranged, neatly, by a stranger who has studied exactly what you like.

Played loud in a room full of people, it performs the oldest trick afro house knows, which is to move several hundred strangers in one direction at the same instant and let them believe it was their idea.

Mastered by Dietrich Schoenemann at Complete Mastering in Connecticut. Released September 17, 2024 on 1432 R.