I’m not sure how I missed this one when it came out, except to say it was the summer of 2025 and stuff was weird. But when the second release in this planned trio of EPs from the Serbian psychedelic folk band Sekvoya arrived recently (March 2026, that is), I dug through my inbox and there was Gathering of Enchanted Herbs.
Sekvoya is the brainchild of band leader Ivan Krstićs, who opened a creative space and recording studio he called Soundbubble where he lived in Novi Sad, Serbia, and started playing around with sounds and ideas. He named the band for the sequoia tree, which mostly grows only in North America, but apparently there’s a small grove of them in the Serbian village of Stol, which Krstićs sees as a symbol of “a silent and immense creature and keeper of time, (where) ancient memory lives.” If you’ve ever seen one, you’ll get what he means.
This first EP is a one-man show, Krstićs credited with guitars, bass, synths, percussions, and drum programming. The music of Sekvoya seems to use Balkan folk and dance music as a starting place which Krstićs has turned into a rock-based world music. To my ear the Turkish psych influence is strong, with some of the guitars mimicking the electric oud, and the dub bass lines pushing into Baba Zula territory. Novi Sad was never occupied by Ottomans but the Empire still had a lot of influence throughout the Balkans. But there are many other sounds mixed in as well, including some of the guitar tones and riffs of Malian desert blues (Tinariwen, Mdou Moctar), Balkan rhythms mixed with rock attitude, and the funky, fuzzed-out surf rock of Khruangbin.
The opening track and lead single “Shake Charmer” is representative. My first thought on hearing it was, “What is this, a lost Moody Blues album?” The keyboard is set to Mellotron flute and the drums snap out an indie rock riff before Krstić’s hollow surf guitar chimes in, the keyboard adds a keening organ layer and you’re traveling with Kruangbin through psychedelic Anatolia. “Mugwort” sets a Balkan melody on a woozy keyboard over lots of chugging guitars and a straight rock beat, with an intriguing bridge chorus to keep it interesting. In fact all of these tracks are just the right length to keep the trance inducing repetition from morphing into monotony. The closer “Black Pepper” is the spiciest, blending swoopy Moog-like synth with chugging rhythm guitar and deeply processed lead guitar that sounds like the mutterings of a duck on drugs. There’s also a cleaner guitar solo that would be at home in Timbuktu.
Somewhere along the line Krstić recruited some band members to fill out the lineup and take these tunes live, as in this rendition of “Black Pepper.”
The second chapter of the Sekvoya journey comes with The Magic of Slavic Rituals. It’s more of the same, with a slightly more spontaneous feel from the nature of a full band rather than a one-man show. Here’s Kristić is joined by Dušan Živanović on guitar, Aleksandar Marin keyboards, Petar Šćepanović bass and Luka Aleksić drums. Opener “Devil’s Town” has a strong Balkan dance feel to the melody, a clean snare sound on Luka 
Aleksić’s kit, intertwining layers of guitar lines and a keyboard effect that sounds like marimba. The deeply trance like “Fairy Potion” has a stomping six-eight rhythm; “Under The Hill” an ancient sounding melody played in unison on keyboard and guitar with a dub bass that sends it from the forest to the bazaar. “Village Of Stol,” named for the home of those wayward sequoia trees, evokes a timeless village veiled in a curtain of wah-wah guitar, prog-rock riffing and mysterious watery effects.
I like the way the publicity from the label describes this second EP: “…each track is built as an ascending spiral, a tribal dance blending hypnotic grooves with evocative melodic lines. Here, the ritual dimension becomes central, the music does not merely narrate folklore, but reactivates it through a contemporary lens.” That captures it pretty well.
(Zero Nove Nove, 2025 and 2026)
