Christmas Exotica

The Manakooras: Christmas With The Manakooras: Snowfall / Christmas Day / Matchstick Girl / Christmas Every Day
(Hi-Tide Recordings, HT-111, US, 2023)

There haven't been too many Exotica Christmas records. Maybe this is because Exotica is associated with far away countries where the sun shines all day long, with long white beaches and tropical forests with all kinds of weird animals making even weirder sounds. That doesn't mix well with snowy landscapes, cozy fireplaces and warm Christmas sweaters. Or sleigh rides. Most exotica is instrumental, which means that if you are not going to cover well-known Christmas songs, you have a serious problem. Because how are you going to make instrumental music with exotic instruments like a Hawaiian guitar and bongos sound like Christmas music if you can't use sleigh bells?

Despite all this, the self-proclaimed surfxotica band The Manakooras from the southern part of the USA (mainly North Carolina) gave it a try and came up with a four-song Christmas EP, all instrumentals and all originals. It worked in the artwork of the sleeve - there was no doubt that the music on the record was Exotica, but the Christmas balls hanging from the palm trees and floating in the ocean, the Christmas lights around the neck of the mermaid and the candy canes between the statues gave it just the right Christmas touch. As for the music - the first song was called "Snowfall" and guess what: the band started the song with sleigh bells! But in the rest of the songs there are no or hardly any sleigh bells. All four songs are great instrumentals, relaxing and, yes, exotic. But if you play them in the middle of summer, you can be sure that no one will complain that you are playing a Christmas record in the summer... so the perfect choice for those of us who like to play Christmas records all year round, if you live with people who can only stand Christmas music in December.

You can listen to all four tracks on Bandcamp:

There you can also order the EP.