The Birth and Death of Stars

MZAZA are a six-piece band with an Australian-European line-up and an aesthetic that recalls the free-spirited romanticism of Lhasa de Sela or redoubtable France-based collective Lo’Jo, who also blend Gypsy music with jazz, French chanson and Spanish and North African rhythms using a swag of instruments from all over. This album, MZAZA’s third, is a cross-genre cornucopia, a giver of gifts both aural and cerebral, with 12 multi-textured songs that reflect Greek astronomy and mythology and musicians whose own journeys feed themes of migration and connection, humanity and turmoil.

With members of the band of Greek heritage, having studied Balkan and Middle Eastern music in Greece – and with the album being recorded at a studio in Athens – there’s a focus on the eons-old roots of music, and of philosophy. Each song is intended to pique thought: the French-language ‘Lucifer’, with its power-violin opening, looks at the evil inherent in institutionally sanctioned oppression. Punchy, energetic and suffused with joy, ‘Stardust’ is part dance-floor filler, part ode to human connection. The album’s title-track finds Pauline Maudy, MZAZA’s French-Moroccan lead singer, in golden voice, deploying lyrics that tell of assisted dying, mortality and dust to [star]dust. A supernova of an album.

NB This review was amended on March 9 2021 to correct the name of lead singer Pauline Maudy, which mistakenly appeared as Pauline Mundy in the original version.