Dionysus vs Tamada

Georgian artist Lasha Chapel has already enjoyed some underground success performing smoky, Anglophone ballads backed by minimal electronic beats. After a decade abroad in Latvia and Germany, he has now returned to his native Tbilisi to reconnect with his roots, and recorded this debut as Tamada. The name refers to the Georgian toastmaster who traditionally provides songs and stories at banquets, and it’s a role Tamada throws himself into body and soul, singing in Georgian in a tremulous tenor that trembles with emotion. Chapel has been known to perform these songs in his live sets as a kind of hipster joke – and there is something almost comical in his exaggeratedly lachrymose delivery. But he rescues it from being merely pastiche by accompanying traditional vocals with hyper-modern electronic rhythms and textures.

‘Tantali’ is twitchy electro with chunky slap bass and a Levantine keyboard revelling in woozy microtonal pitch bends. ‘Gamdis’ mixes hand-drums and a thudding digital kick, with sinuous keys mimicking double-reed pipes and kamancheh fiddle, while Chapel’s vocals, dripping in maudlin sorrow, sound like the last drunken guest at a wedding realising he’s going home alone again. Both serious and playful, it’s a highly entertaining mash-up of innovation and tradition.