Idle Moon: How Afrobeat Built the Instrumental Grooves of Nomad

A Vancouver Four-Piece Recorded Seven Instrumentals to Four-Track Tape with No Overdubs

Zombie, the 1976 record by Fela Kuti and Africa 70, is where the story of Nomad starts. Asked in 2023 to name the influences that shaped them, Idle Moon put Fela first. The band’s debut album, released on 31 March 2023, carries that Afrobeat pocket into seven instrumentals for bass, drums, keys and guitar.

Idle Moon have a track from Nomad in the BlackSounds.News playlist below, and the band’s artist profile collects their coverage. The album came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play on the opener, then read on for the lineage behind it.

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The Afrobeat and Ethio-Jazz Lineage Behind a Vancouver Record Made Without Overdubs

Lagos is where the line starts. On records such as Zombie, Fela Kuti and Africa 70 built long tracks on interlocking guitar lines, horn sections and Tony Allen’s drumming. As a result, the rhythm section carried the groove from start to finish. That is the Afrobeat model, and it travelled well because it never depended on a singer.

Two more names complete the line Idle Moon point to. In Addis Ababa, Mulatu Astatke joined Ethiopian scales to jazz in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a sound now called Ethio-jazz, with vibraphone and organ near the centre. In New Orleans, The Meters made a four-piece rhythm section the lead instrument on instrumentals such as Cissy Strut (1969).

Indeed, the band’s own site lists all three as heavy influences. Sinusoidal Music heard the same three names in the record when it came out in 2023.

Astatke shaped how Nomad was made, too. In a 2023 Q&A with Each Measure, the band said the production of his albums was a model for theirs. So they recorded to a four-track machine with a strict rule of no overdubs, because they wanted the album to sound live and a little retro. John Raham recorded and mixed it at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver over two days. Philip Shaw Bova mastered it.

Where Idle Moon Fits in the Vancouver Scene

Meanwhile, Vancouver had a working Afrobeat scene before Nomad arrived. Miami Device, an 11-piece Afrobeat and funk band that formed in the city in 2007, built its sound on horns over syncopated guitars and named Fela Kuti as its model. Pugs and Crows, an instrumental group from the same city, won the Juno for Instrumental Album of the Year in 2013 with Fantastic Pictures. Idle Moon describe their four players as Vancouver scene veterans, and the line-up includes members of both bands.

The four are Marcus Abramzik on bass, Ben Brown on drums, Owen Connell on keys and Leathan Milne on guitar. In the Each Measure Q&A, the band explained the method. One member wrote the basic structures, brought them to the others, and the songs changed in rehearsal, some of them a great deal. Milne has also said that each piece was arranged to fit the period of time it describes. That is why the album opens before the universe exists and ends with Death of the Species.

The same method leaves room for the art rock and classic rock in the band’s sound. On Blindly Running Towards the Ocean, Indie Underrated heard a staccato, chicken-picking lead and long phased chords that recalled Sly and the Family Stone. Good Music Radar picked up a Talking Heads edge on the same track. Both readings fit a band whose groove comes from Lagos and New Orleans while its guitars point at rock.

Where Nomad Sits Beside Khruangbin and Other Instrumental Bands Built on the Pocket

The Seven Tracks in Order

Overall, Nomad runs about 25 minutes. The running order follows the planet from before its birth to the end of life on it, and each track gives the rhythm section a different job.

1. The Endless Nothing (4:34) opens on a smooth bass line and clean guitar chords, with organ arriving later. The band wrote it to suggest floating in space before the universe existed.
2. Time Keeps Moving (3:43) sets organ and guitar over a steady bass part.
3. The Long Survival (3:18) brings crunchy guitars and distorted keyboards. It was one of two singles, both released with live videos filmed at Afterlife Studios in March 2023.
4. Good Living (0:59) is an organ-led interlude of under a minute.
5. Blindly Running Towards the Ocean (2:41) shifts tempo and dynamics around swelling synths.
6. Floating in Plastic (3:53), the other single, drifts into a psychedelic haze at its midpoint, as Obscure Sound noted.
7. Death of the Species (5:50), the longest track, closes the album on the extinction of life.

Adjacent Acts for the Idle Moon Listener

Khruangbin are the clearest neighbour. The Houston trio built their mostly instrumental records on Laura Lee’s bass and Mark Speer’s clean guitar, drawing on 1960s and 1970s Thai funk, soul and dub. The Endless Nothing starts from the same pairing of smooth bass and clean chords, although Idle Moon add organ and lean harder into rock.

Closer to home, BADBADNOTGOOD came out of Toronto as an instrumental group playing jazz versions of hip-hop tracks, and later recorded with Ghostface Killah. They showed that a Canadian instrumental band could carry the jazz and hip-hop lineage without a voice at the front. Nomad works in that same space, with Afrobeat and funk as its starting point instead.

The record suits listeners who follow Afrobeat and funk into rock, and who like an instrumental album where the rhythm section stays in charge. Anyone who reached Fela through Khruangbin, or found The Meters while digging through old funk, has an easy way in.

From the BlackSounds.News curator team: “Put Good Living next to The Long Survival and you hear the whole idea. One is under a minute of organ, the other runs on crunchy guitar and distorted keys, and the same four players hold the pocket under both.”

You can stream Nomad in the Spotify player above or on Apple Music, and buy it on Bandcamp. To follow Idle Moon, find the band on Spotify and Apple Music. The live studio videos for both singles are on the YouTube channel, and the official site carries the band’s story, credits and contact details.

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