Lord RAJA “Amadeus EP” (Ghostly International)

Pretty soon after joining the Ghostly Label in 2015, Chester Raj Anand aka Lord Raja joined label mates Shigeto and Heathered Pearls for an extensive European tour.

“When I would go out I would see techno DJs, but it didn’t really speak to me, it was kind of boring,” he says. “People are so fucking precious about techno, or dance music, or club music. It’s like people who wash their hands until they bleed. It’s unnecessarily pristine. So I wanted to make the shit I would want to hear.”

Raja’s 8-track “Amadeus EP”, equipped with chunky synth lines and ungainly drum machines who just wont quit… they traverse the spectrum from b-boy park moves to dark & very boisterous Detroit techno. “Fox Den”, an eight-minute passageway through the vast uses of electro, was released as part of the Adult Swim singles series last year. It carries the credential of being a serious piece of writing without being “precious”.

“Amadeus EP” in whole works as an pro-active reminder of how the term “minimalism’ has become a vague euphemism for vanilla. Using that mind-set, Raja is not re-inventing the wheel here. Just giving a friendly reminder on how euphoric and unhampered dance music can be. When the focus is on dance music.

“Amadeus EP” by Lord Raja released on cassette and in digital format on May 19th on Ghostly International

Purchase EP

John-Paul Shiver

SF Music Journalist who writes for @pulplab @sfsonicmag , likes more songs about buildings and food. He's written for several Bay Area Music publications over the past 15 years.