War Against the Lie

Egyptian-French artist Susu Laroche (one half of Fertile Crescent with Oxhy, and most recently released a collaborative project with Mobbs on Modern Love) presents her new solo album. Longtime collaborator of the Doyenne label after tracks on the first cassette as a split with Flora Yin-Wong (PAN / Modern Love / INA GRM/Shelter Press), and a cover for the 'Venus Rising From The Sea' compilation via Doyenne x Boomkat. Here she hones her signature brooding Middle Eastern melodies, dabke drums and haunted vocalisations into the culmination of a contemporary artefact arriving as a wax-sealed box.

After the finding an artefact known only as 'Body 53' in the British Museum, Laroche inquired deeper into the Royal Cemetery at Ur in Southern Iraq where it was found. Her research led her to Queen Puabi, found at the same grounds, drawing parallels between the shadowy figure often cited as a queen, consort, or priestess, with the Sufi female saint, Rabia. These historical documentations and Sufi texts including 'Al Hallaj Tawasin' (Book of the Purity of the Glory of the One) formed the basis of the lyrics embedded in the album. 'War Against The Lie' devises a para-fictional account of a historical law that governed this period of ancient Zoroastrian civilisation in Persia.