Guarani & Kaiowá ft. Matt Black, Youth, Tymon Dogg

Shamans In Space (Record Store Day 2026) Guarani & Kaiowá ft. Matt Black, Youth, Tymon Dogg RSD 2026 edition

“This is our Mba’ekuaa. Our Technology. You have your Mba’ekuaa, and we have ours” - Nhanderu Tadeu, Guarani and Kaiowá Indigenous Shaman. Can sound take us to outer space? In the ancestral sonic traditions of Guarani & Kaiowá Indigenous communities in Brazil, sound is understood as a form of Mba’ekuaa - a powerful technology to dialogue with spirit entities and restore balance with nature. It is a vehicle for shamanic travel powered by three sacred instruments: the Mimby (whistle), the Mbaraká (rattle), and the Takuapu (a sacred bamboo baton). These sacred tools are described as their “wifi to the gods" where the sounds of the instruments are seen to open a portal between worlds. The Guarani & Kaiowá use no hallucinogens: sound is their sole tool for voyaging between realms. This album is the result of a cross-cultural encounter, a dialogue between worlds made possible through sound.

The collaboration was born from the Sounding Futures project, which brought together Guarani & Kaiowá elders from Brazil with pioneering UK electronic musicians Youth (Martin Glover) and Matt Black (Coldcut). Their first exchange took place in an ambisonic sound lab at UCL, followed by an improvised jam session at Youth’s home studio that became the foundation of this record. What makes this project radically different is the depth of its collaborative process. A core condition was that the most sacred chants — understood as powerful incantations — would not be remixed or interfered with. This respect extended through the entire production. The shamans acted as intellectual directors and cosmic curators of their ancestral sounds, reviewing each track in detail and guiding adjustments to the final arrangements of each composition. The result is a truly co-created album; testimony to the power of sound to open dialogues between worlds, making new realities audible, thinkable and possible.