The Sufis

The Sufis began their career dedicated to excavating garage rock nuggets and re-creating them in lo-fi, bedroom psych style. After releasing two albums that sounded like a cross between the Byrds, (the original) Nirvana, and the house band on Shindig, the duo added synthesizers, dubby post-chillwave psych, and smooth soft rock textures to their sound on a pair of albums that brought them up to date. The Sufis were formed in Nashville by Calvin Laporte and Evan Smith, and the pair's hooky songcraft and nimble production skills caught the ear of the U.K.-based, Cornershop-run label Ample Play. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2012, with their second batch of psych-pop gems, Inventions, following in the summer of 2013. After cranking out two albums in such a short time, the duo took a step back and spent the next few years concentrating on helping other artists, producing or engineering albums by Paul Messis/the Market Squares, Universal Friend, and the Paperhead. They also left Nashville and settled in Brooklyn, where they studied with legendary avant-garde figures LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela. Returning to their own music, the Sufis left strict garage rock revivalism behind in favor of a more subdued sound with traces of psych-pop in the mix along with post-punk and dub reggae. They wrote and recorded their third album, After Hours, in June 2017 and released it on Burger Records in January 2018. The duo stuck to a similar sound on 2020's Double Exposure, this time adding more synths and delving into spacy soft rock influences.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo