Album Notes

Tsars recreate a musical era that never existed. A Land That Time Passed Over where Lee Morgan and Ramsey Lewis really did mingle with the go-go surf beatnik scene. Where Dick Dale recorded a version of “Haitian Fight Song”. A world where the influence of the exotic was not subordinated into kitsch.

Tsars have invented a musical vocabulary that draws from hipster popular culture. Surf, Tiki and exotic themes are combined with a Burroughs-esque self conscious world weariness in an idealized hipster mise-en-scene. Elements of rock, jazz and whatever else the band has absorbed from being raised by the television set and the wolves of a lifetime of playing music come spilling back out in sometimes startling forms.