Friends of Friends Music, the Los Angeles label behind artists Shlohmo, Salva, Jerome LOL and Perera Elsewhere, has just announced the latest artist to sign to their roster, LA-based producer & guitarist Mark Nieto aka COMBAT!, prepping his self-titled debut LP to drop September 16.

COMBAT! is comprised of 13 songs that fall at various points along the intersection of experimental guitar music and an array of electronic sounds, ranging from house on one end of the spectrum and ambient on the other. With the thought of crafting optimal music for emotional drives around Los Angeles, COMBAT! recorded the LP while traveling around the globe, garnering wisdom from an array of locales while always keeping his indomitable Southern California heritage in peripheral focus.

With past relationships, growing pains and an unavoidable sense of place (and displacement) forming the emotional crux of the album, tracks like “Days of Dust” and “Heavy Accent” are deeply evocative efforts, full of harmonically complex guitar bits, organic rhythms and a deeply understood sense of atmosphere. The album is entirely instrumental, with energetic highs like “Jacaranda” and “Open And Close The Globe”.

Track Listing

1. Jacaranda
2. Heavy Accent
3. Olive Skin
4. Kenji
5. We Were Golden
6. Days Of Dust
7. Avron
8. The Firefall And The Temple
9. Saltwater Park
10. Open And Close The Globe
11. Sun Crawl

OMBAT!, speaking to Self-Titled Mag, had some words to share on “Jacaranda” –

Jacaranda was the last song I finished for the album. I recorded most of it right before I played a show in Tijuana at Moustache so I had that venue in mind the whole time. Anton Hochheim, who plays drums on the song, crossed the border with me to perform. As soon as we got back to LA, we met up and recorded his drum parts to finish the song.

Around the time I was finishing up the album, I found a box of my uncle’s old mixtapes. He used to record songs off the radio and I guess the tape recorder he used had a built in mic so on one of the tapes you can hear him walking around in the silence between the songs. He passed away when I was a kid but it was because of his influence that I took an interest in music. I took some of those subtle sounds and added them to the record. You can hear him walking around and putting the cassette in the machine right before the drums start.