Matel announces Zaire EP with lead single The Ghost

On The Ghost, Martel opens his Zaire project with a track that feels more like excavation than composition. Layering Donato Dozzy-esque polyrhythms with hand-played percussion and synthetic textures that seem to sweat under their own humidity, the piece unfolds as a slow-motion descent into the sonic underbrush of the Congo Rainforest.

There’s nothing ornamental about the tribal elements here. Drums stagger and loop in uneven cycles, brushed with distortion and echo, as though eroded by time or conflict. Synths rasp and swell in the background, hovering between presence and memory. Fragments of field recordings and sampled voices flicker at the edges—ghosts of histories that refuse to stay buried.

It’s a stark introduction to Zaire, an EP that positions itself in opposition to the polished piety of gentrified Afro-house and the generic uplift of festival-ready “world music.” Instead, Martel traces the political fault lines running through the sonic landscape: colonial extraction, corporate plunder, and the uneasy persistence of life amid systemic violence.

Martel comes at this from an oblique angle. A former architect turned composer, his path cuts across film, underground parties, and the gaming world—most recently scoring Bleak Faith: Forsaken. That breadth shows in his sense of scale and texture, but it’s his ideological commitment that gives The Ghost its force.

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