From the economically innovative, but musically inconspicuous city of Mannheim – Germany’s Manhattan, in a way – comes one of the most interesting musical crossbreeds in recent times.

Sea Moya is a trio that consists of drummer Elias Foerster as well as Iven Niklas Jansen and David Schnitzler who share bass, guitar and synth duties. And for once, the association of such disparate styles as Math Rock, Funk Pop, Darkside-ish Ambient and Electro, Krautronics and plain old Afrobeat doesn’t happen on paper only.

The band, which describe themselves as a “psychedelic beat outfit”, actually manage to get all their listening habits into a cohesive whole, be it on slow, synth-driven songs like “Slow Down” and “Golden” or the more upbeat ones like “Nothing Is Real” and “Photographs”.

These last two songs are the singles from their new EP “Baltic States”, which they recorded while travelling through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (obviously). On the five-song EP, they add laid-back Hip-Hop beats and just a hint of oriental scales and instrumentation to their already eclectic repertoire.

The best thing about them is: you don’t have to get all the influences they put into their songs! You can simply dive into them like a pool full of syrupy liquid, brought to a comfortable temperature by the last rays of the evening sun.

Whether or not you like “Photographs”, I invite you to listen to their other material as well. For one, because so far they have only released one EP and a stand-alone single before “Baltic States”.

But mostly because, and I say this knowing fully well it sounds like a run-of-the-mill promotion agency phrase, every single song of theirs has its own unique character.

Stream “Baltic States” EP here.

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Photo: Dominic Kleila

Sea Moya on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.