Backstage Gurus

Backstage Gurus is a German ethnic/fusion electronica project established circa 2018 by two veteran producers, Gabriel Le Mar and Groove Titan (members of Saafi Brothers band) with their long-term collaborators Castor Troy and Bidiol in collaboration with Persian vocalist and critically-acclaimed visual artist Gila Abutalebi. Backstage Gurus combine elements of trance, downtempo, "liquid dub," ambient, chillout and other similar genres with musical traditions from Greece, Mediterranean and Middle East regions, Sufi melodies, and traditional ethnical instruments, such as the oud, ney, santur, duduk, and bouzouki. In 1996, Groovetitan and Castor Troy had a similar "ethnic-electronic fusion" project Human Instinct, and several guest instrumentalists from that era returned to work with Backstage Gurus.

In April 2020, the band's debut release came out, [m=1714664], a conceptual album following Odyssey's journey around the Mediterranean Sea. Released by renowned UK label LSD - Liquid Sound Design, the album came in various digital formats, including a 24-bit FLAC "Digital Bundle" with four bonus tracks, and as a CD edition jointly produced with San Francisco-based Six Degrees Records.