PREMIERE: Sirens of Lesbos ft: Erick The Architect - Bowie (Single)

‘Peace’, the second album from Swiss five-piece Sirens of Lesbos, sounds like it’s beamed in from a far-off, sunkissed paradise. The serene calm at the eye of a storm, it’s not just our out-of-control world that’s spinning around them; it’s also an intense whirl of support.

International radio play stretches from the BBC’s Giles Peterson to KCRW’S Dan Wilcox, while a TV interview with France24/Encore! was broadcast to 61.2 million viewers. Atlanta’s platinum selling hip-hop producer Christo (J. Cole, JID, Earthgang) was an early supporter and collaborator, hip hop's newest star JID (30M+ streams per month) wears their merchandise and Stormzy/Kasabian producer Fraser T. Smith follows them on Instagram. And the roll-call of collaborators on ‘Peace’ further highlights the regard in which they’re held, stretching from Grammy Award-winning Godfather of P-funk Bootsy Collins to Erick The Architect, MC and producer with Brooklyn’s cult hip-hop crew Flatbush Zombies.

Hailing from Bern, Sirens of Lesbos’s sound comes from the diverse musical tastes and histories of the band: producers Melvyn Buss and Arci Friede, co-producers and vocalist sisters Jasmina and Nabyla Serag, and Denise Häberli, the group’s art director. Tracing a line through Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, Toto, Sly and the Family Stone, and OutKast, ‘Peace’ connects yacht rock and hip-hop via radiant, infinitely graduated hues – what the band calls their worldbeat sound.

‘Bowie’ meditates on desire and the ephemerality of satisfying it, Erick The Architect adding East Coast smoothness over synths shimmering in a heat haze. ‘Baybaybae’ slaps with the tightness and funk of Steely Dan and ‘Felizitas’ cruises through astral planes on the lush, ad-libbed airs of the Serag sisters.

‘Run Run Run’, the first Christo co-production, showcases the band’s adventurous AOR musicality. Contemporary and classic, it’s topped by the Serag’s undoubted ability to craft a universally appealing pop hook. ‘After The Beep’ then flows back to hip-hop, what sound like deeply dug 70s samples are actually the band’s exemplary live prowess.

‘(I Don't Know, I Don't Know, I Don't Know)’ is dreamy, mellow pop sweetly lamenting an unsatisfying relationship, UK rapper Treasure Bloom adds lyrical grit to the cosmic neo-soul of ‘Mr Bruddas In Arms’ and ‘Easy’, with its country lilt, provides the album's most reflective moment. Sampling 70s Zamrock giants WITCH, ‘Weeping Pine’ highlights the Serag’s deft, lyrical inventiveness, its animist metaphor foregrounding personal and environmental themes.

Second Christo co-production ‘Everything’ draws on Washington DC vocalist and songwriter dreamcastmoe (recently signed to Ghostly’s Spectral Sound), who swims in raw, space funk. ‘Sweet Harmony’ repurposes seminal UK rave group The Beloved’s 1993 classic, adding in raucous soundsystem vibes. And ‘Candid Mess’, with British-Nigerian Joshua Idehen, a poet-cum-singer and Sons of Kemet collaborator, swims in grand orchestral drama.

‘Peace’ signs off with ‘8 Billion’, a cosmic zoom out taking a macro look at Planet Earth. Featuring the distinctly smooth Bootsy Collins, its socio-politically minded psychedlia recalls Deee-Lite. Which is apt, because as similarly out-there denizens occupying their own distinct musical universe, Sirens Of Lesbos are also both of and out of this world.