For the Manchester-based Angolan electronic artist Nazar, the injustice and repression that marred his home country’s past became an inspiration for his present music. On his debut album, Guerrilla, the 26-year-old producer weaves his family’s fraught history during the Angolan civil war—with a particular focus on the experiences of his father, the politician Alcides Sakala Simões—into mercurial music that digs deep into personal and political conflict. To heighten the impact, Nazar laces his icy electronics with ruptured percussion and field recordings to craft “rough kuduro,” his own dark spin on the kinetic dance genre developed in Luanda in the 1980s.

On “Bunker,” a menacing club cut from Guerrilla featuring London DJ and curator Shannen SP, Nazar gathers coiled synths and clattering drums to induce an instant sense of tumult. The track was inspired by a story about Nazar’s older sisters, who took shelter in a hotel with foreign journalists during the 1992 Angolan election. A helicopter whirr fuses with layers of chopped-up backing vocals and audio of guns being reloaded. The rhythmic agitation forms a restless backdrop for Shannen SP’s cool lyrical delivery; she and Nazar describe eerily quiet city streets and bullet wounds to the chest. Mining both the hallucinogenic mood of trip-hop and kuduro’s turbulent DNA, “Bunker” is a sinister and urgent missive on the long-lasting scars of war.

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