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“Santaka” means “confluence” in Lithuanian, and it could not be a more appropriate name for Marijus Aleksa and Manfredas Bajelis’s joint musical project. To start with, you can hear a sense of confluence, right there in the fabric of the sound, more and more with every release: historical depth, modernist inspiration and quirky personal character swirl together into a beautiful river of rhythm and oddity. Not only does Santaka involves a comping together of a wide variety of talents in the experimental music community of Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, but it represents multiple streams in the country’s musical and cultural history across decades – perhaps even centuries – flowing together into a coherent whole. And further, still, it is the sound of two men who have travelled the world and participated in some of the most vital and exploratory global scenes, now returning to their home and their roots, bringing their manifold learnings to bear on facilitating this uniquely Lithuanian sound.
