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Several members of Aphrodesia moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York and this situation, has had positive effecst in the development of the band.  “We had something we haven’t had before, a diversity of feedback and viewpoints in the studio, because in New York, all these talented people will just stop by the studio and listen,” people like Gale’s friends from the Blue Man Group who gave Gale input on several tracks. “It’s a product of working somewhere where you have to drive like California versus New York, where you walk down the block and bump into people,” Gale muses.

“Sonically, our music has become much more varied than in the past. And this album broadens and strengthens what we have been building on,” says Gale. “It was a conscious decision, really getting more creative and going for different sounds, discovering a much more diverse palette of instruments and sonic surprises.”

Social concerns and exploitation play an important role in Aphrodesia ‘s message, such as the song Special Girl’. “We learned the term ‘Special Girl’ from a friend who had just returned from Shanghai on business,” explains singer and songwriter Lara Maykovich. “He was offered, a special girl, a prostitute. The song is the story of this trans-continental sex trade, a kind of mockery of this old game where man thinks he is winning. Power and money are evidently not the final quench. The thirst is satisfied by a more precious commodity. Sex, our most powerful possession and that which connects us to the unstoppable nature that man will never control. We began to think about the West’s misconceptions on what is of value. The fear-driven mass of consumption, our denial of death that obstructs us from seeing what is truly precious.”

“As lyricists we carefully consider our invocations and intentionally apply them to our current political world struggles and our own fractured American reality,” explains Maykovich. “Since the voice of suffering is universal and passion is interchangeable, we don’t consider this a borrowed tradition. It’s one of the many traditions of mystery spiritual being have originated from.”

“I think because we are a younger white band, we felt like we needed to prove ourselves. We really wanted to do things right and give the music respect, and going to Africa was part of that,” explains Gale. “We feel like we have done that, though of course we’re always learning. But there is a feeling that we have gone down that path of trying to do everything authentically, now it’s time to embrace our own sound.”

With Precious Commodity, Aphrodesia has created a delightful mix of Afrobeat, funk, and global music.

Buy the MP3 download: Precious Commodity. Buy the CD from: www.aphrodesia.org

Other titles available on CD: Wind Song, Rough & Funny-Live, Frontlines, Shackrobeat Vol. 1