Qa'a is a long-running psych-rock project centered around Spain's Victor Hurtado (Huan) and it is quite a bizarre one, both conceptually (magical/quasi-ritualistic in intent) and musically (it sounds like a lost dispatch from Krautrock's weirdest fringes).  Consequently, it is no surprise that Hurtado has collaborated with Nurse With Wound in the past or that Qa'a's work has been championed by the über-eccentric Julian Cope.  I am not certain that I myself necessarily champion this overwhelming triple-LP, but Sang is undeniably significant and ambitious, resembling nothing less than the spiritual successor to folks like Can and Faust, albeit one that is also indebted to noise, outsider art, and Miles Davis' wilder fusion-era excesses.
There are two aspects of this opus that immediately eclipse everything else about it.  The first is the length, as listening to almost 100 minutes of psych-rock squall, effects-heavy caterwauling, and electronic entropy is more of an event than a mere listening experience.  However, Sang is one of those rare albums where the vinyl format actually enhances listenability in a meaningful way, as each of its three records are intended to work as discrete sections that can be played in varying arrangements.  The other prominent feature of Sang is how remarkably authentic it sounds, as Qa'a are definitely not some guys who liked Tago Mago a lot and decided to make their own pastiche.
Rather, Hurtado and his bandmates seem far more like lost members of the Amon Düül commune that emerged from a forest after 18 years with some self-made instruments and wondered where everyone else went.  That said, I think Can probably was a huge influence, as Qa'a share Damo Suzuki's very "free" approach to vocals and lyrics, as well as the band's penchant for strong grooves (and periodic forays into ethnographic forgeries).  While a few songs, like "El vent mou l'aigua," admittedly do sound a bit too Can-like for my taste, Qa'a's version of Krautrock usually seems to be a significantly more snarling, chaotic, and primal strain than that unleashed by their forebears.  No one will ever accuse Qa'a of having motorik grooves nor will anyone ever be able to fall asleep with Sang playing in the background.
Happily, Sang’s best songs also tend to be its longest.  I definitely do not think that Victor squandered a single second worrying about things like hooks or structure, but Qa'a's gleefully unfettered freedom and spontaneity yield quite a few striking passages and surprises.  While the band primarily focus on free-form psych jams with crescendos of howling vocals and cacophonous guitars, they rarely overstay their welcome or allow themselves to meander for too long.  Rather, the longer pieces tend to be broken up or separated by collage-like interludes or passages of noise/industrial electronics.  I get the definite sense that Sang was culled from hundreds of hours of improvisations and experiments.  I also think several hundred more hours were then spent painstakingly shaping it all into a sprawling psych-rock voyage that frequently casts both rock and reality aside in hopes of creating a mindfuck of epic proportions.
Whether Qa'a actually succeeded in what they were trying to do or not is not entirely clear to me, as I am not personally a huge fan of a lot of their revered influences and kindred spirits.  A strong case could certainly be made that Sang is a towering monument to self-indulgence that sounds like it was culled from incompletely shaped improvisations from 30 or 40 years ago, but I could probably level a similar charge at some Can albums.  I did find some of Hurtado's spontaneous-sounding vocalizing to be a bit annoying though.  Still, Sang feels like a major statement nonetheless and it appeals strongly to my love of outsider art: Victor is clearly someone who absolutely, completely does not care what the rest of the world is doing and Qa'a's bizarro, ritualistic free-form psychedelia is delivered with total sincerity and conviction.  I suspect that Sang's unique charms will resonate most strongly with obsessive fans of Faust, Can, and the like, but Qa'a might also appeal to those looking for a dispatch from rock's fringiest and most uncompromising outer limits.  In that regard, Sang is hard to top.
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