The Comeback of Kamar Sabz

09 Nov, 2024

There is an artist called Kamar Sabz, and only two people know about him.

Back in the mid-2000s there was a meme doings the rounds for a bit where you "created" a music album by means of repeatedly hitting Wikipedia's random article button. It was a fun little piece of amusement, especially among us music nerds, and occupied the no-lifing late nights of a couple of forums and communities I hung out in for a few days.

1. Go to the Wikipedia home page and click "random article" (in the menu on > the left). That is your band's name.

2. Click random article again; that is your album name.

3. Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

4. Go to google image search and type in something like DSC0****.jpg. Replace the 4 digits after 0 with any number, like DSC00276.jpg or DSC01938.jpg.

When I did the meme for the first time, it resulted in the debut album of one Kamar Sabz (no, not the mountain in Iran), who's grand first appearance was an idiosyncratic tracklist of people's names, obscure plants only best known by their Latin nominer and geographical locations all over the world. Google provided the randomly chosen cover (I vaguely recall there being an extra rule about using the Xth search result but I'm not 100% on that), and that should have been it. Except, I'm always a little too imaginative (some would say "extra") to just leave it at that. I made a post about Sabz' album in my Last.FM journal (remember when Last.FM had those?) and besides ticking the expected boxes of the meme, I happened to spin a little bit of prose about the album: the context, the style, maybe a select highlight or two. The odd bunch of song titles handed out to me by the internet's largest encyclopedia directly inspired how I imagined Sabz, who - as my mind conjured him - was a singer/songwriter dabbling in the abstract and surreal. His globe-hopping wanderlust years inspired his song titles, while his sound laid somewhere between indie folk and indietronica with a touch of prog-like experimentation and blogosphere-approved unpredictability. These were the freak folk heydays after all, and Sabz slotted right in.

A good friend of mine (hi Kaoru!) had a similarly expressive imaginative streak and joined in on the fun, commenting on the journal like we were talking about a real artist and an album. That back-and-forth created new Kamar lore and eventually I created a couple of follow-up albums via the same meme. In a short period of time Kamar had a small discography going, purely for the entertainment of a couple of nerds in the internet. We still reference Kamar Sabz from time and time again as well, and to us he's an internet legend even if no one else knows he even exists.

One recent night the old meme came back in my mind thanks to an off-hand comment in the middle of a wider conversation. Just to satisfy my own curiosity I tried to remember the ruleset for it, and eventually I managed to find a 2007 Livejournal post where at least one variant of the instructions had been written down. And then, well.. the most unexpected comeback of 2024 suddenly appeared¹.

Kamar Sabz - Telephone Booth

1. Japanese Water Spider
2. Gignac, Lot
3. Chirripo National Park
4. Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback
5. Deep Throat
6. Oceans (Pearl Jam Song)
7. Channels of the Maldives
8. Rudimental
9. Sempra
10. And the Wife Shall Revere Her Husband
11. Skemp
12. Somalia at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics
13. Goody Goody
14. SNAFU
15. Masonite

While it has been a long time since the world last heard from the reclusive Sabz - wherever he has been for the past lifetime and a half - Telephone Booth greets his fans like he never left. The opening moments of the album are practically like he's intentionally welcoming everyone in with something familiar, still naming his songs after wonders of both the natural world and human civilisation, and he weaves through the wandering songs with his usual intricate arrangements built primarily around his signature guitar style. His songs can be as unpredictable as the song titles, and not even all of those can be trusted: "And the Wife Shall Revere Her Husband" is absolutely not the conservative fist-bump anthem that its name would indicate.

However, it is clear that the old dog has picked up a few new tricks along the way too, which becomes clearer as the album progresses. The hectic electronic slickness of "Rudimental" shows that he's keeping up to date with modern production aesthetics even if he still primarily favours his trusty turn-of-millennium drum machines and sample boards, and the almost-sincere bubblegum of "Goody Goody" is the most out-and-out happy he's ever sounded. By far the biggest move sideways is "Oceans", which takes its cheeky subtitle from the grunge guitar walls that roar through the song: it sounds like the work of an artist ready for a stadium tour and though Sabz has dabbled in heavier guitar textures before, this is the most outwardly rrrrock he's ever been. It's sure to split opinions, for sure!

As usual with 15 songs, Sabz takes the listener on a journey through a number of moods and soundscapes, from gentle instrumentals to cryptic neo-folk. It all leads towards the arguable centerpiece, "Somalia at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics" which is a classic piece of Sabz writing as you could get and which stands tall and proud next to his historic series of songs titled after regional sports events, held in legendary status among the fans.

It's difficult to say why the ever-private and interview-shy Sabz has returned after so long and if he's ever going to record anything again. Telephone Booth feels like a way to close a chapter that never got a defined end before his sudden disappearance from the music industry. There's no doubt that the album's biggest fans will be those who have known and cherished Sabz' body of work even as his name has gotten lost in the dusts of history, but perhaps this new release will pick up some new fans as well who'll carry his name in their minds furthermore.

#misc