PRAED
KAF AFRIT (Akuphone)

Praed consists of two Lebanese guys Raed and Paed who combined their names for the group name and also combine their efforts on samples and electronics to create a pulsating web of sound for these four tracks to weave their magic. As well as synths, Raed Yassin adds vocals, while Paed Conca plays electric bass and clarinet. Raed Yassin also graced us with the fine album Archaeophony (2021), which was his version of the "Bush of Ghosts": a remix of ethnographic arabic music deconstructed with his synth and percussion. With Paed, they recorded this album in Beirut and Berlin and it was mixed in Cairo. Hans Koch added bass clarinet and saxophones from his studio in Biel, Switzerland, while percussion and additional keyboards were dubbed in from the Cairo Studio el Araby. It's quite intense with many layers to get lost in with tambourines and those goblet-shaped darbuka hand drums (a relative of the tabla) galloping along throughout. It's more jazz than trance and I see from a quick search of bandcamp they have been making music as a duo for a while. Made in Japan came out in 2012, that has wild guitar and clips of dialogue from movies; Fabrication of Silver Dreams in 2016, Doomsday Survival Kit in 2018 and Live in Sharjah in 2020. Kaf Afit is also cinematic in the sense of creating mental dreamspace, but it doesn't sound like film music, as say Made in Japan does. The bass clarinet is tasty and also seems to be looped to give another dimension to the bottom end. However wild the soprano sax gets, the bass clarinet anchors it, which is a nice concept.

FARID EL ATRACHE
NAGHAM FI HAYATI (We Want Sounds)

I feel as though I am out of my depth talking about Egyptian music. I don't listen to a lot of it, though occasionally some reissue comes along that grabs me and that is the case here. It's actually the fourth and final track that made me pay attention, and that was enough to make me want to hear the whole thing again. This was the final release of El Atrache, a popular artist in the whole Arab world, who died in 1974. His family fled Syria in 1920 and Farid grew up in Cairo, where he took up the Oud. His skill was noted by his teachers and he moved to the radio and eventually to film where he acted and also wrote soundtracks. His sister was a popular actress also, but tragically drowned in the Nile in 1944. Farid was an incurable romantic having endless affairs with his co-stars, though he always played a sad loner in his movie roles. Based on Marcel Pagnol's outstanding Marseille trilogy (films you absolutely should see, starting with "Marius"), "Nagham Fi Hayati" ("Melody in my Life"), directed by Henri Barakat, was the last of 30 or so films which featured Farid as singer, composer and male lead. According to the promo material, this album was sampled by John Lennon on "Revolution No 9" and was a pick to click at the time by Brian Eno. Those guys were always far more hip than the rest of us! While I appreciate the compositional skill of the songs, it's Farid's outstanding oud playing on the final, live track that jumps out of the speakers.

ZEB - THE SPY FROM CAIRO
ANIMAMUNDI (Wonderwheel)

A great return to his classic sound: traditional arab music meets drum patterns and Echoplex, from the Spy from Cairo. The simplest way to describe it is Arabic tradi-modern in dub (though it also includes Turkish delights and Indian flavors) and it picks up from his previous albums Arabadub (2012) and Secretly Famous (2009). Though Style Scott (1956–2014), legendary Jamaican session drummer is no longer with us, his work on Gaudi's posthumous Nusrat album Dub Qawwali set a new bar for drumming on dub albums and we hear its effect here. Known variously as Zeb, or Zeb the Pleb, the spy is Moreno Visini, an Italian of Gypsy heritage, recently resident in New York, and he has been making downtempo electronica for two decades, mixing Jamaican-style dub with bhangra and Arabic instruments. He has been heard remixing Baaba Maal and Novalima. Here, once again, he is the main musician, playing oud, qanun (zither), bass, percussion (darbouka and tablas), woodwinds (ney and bansuri), with presumably tape samples for strings (unless those are synthesized). He takes the notion of a one-man band to new heights with deft layerings, avoiding what my late friend Cheb i Sabbah said was the bane of similar electronica where you don't hear the music, you hear the ProTools. In 2020 Zeb returned to his Italian village to take care of his mother during lockdown. He brought some recent collaborators into this project including Andalucian singer Carmen Estevez who adds eerie stereo vocals to a cumbia, "Extraterrestre," and Fatou Gozlan and Duo Darbar, like souls, who followed the gypsy trail picking up music in India, Turkey and Egypt.

IMED ALIBI & KHALIL EPI
FRIGYA (imedalibi)

This disc represents the meeting between traditional North African percussionist Imed Alibi from Tunisia and producer and multi-instrumentalist Khalil Hentati. Alibi has worked in many North African ensembles and backed performers such as Rachid Taha, Watcha Clan, Natasha Atlas and Emel Mathlouthi. The two spent several years researching and cataloguing Mezwed and Bedoui repertoires, finding strong connections between older African drumming forms among them, and then chose some to rework in a studio with loops, overdubs and effects. The result is a shimmering tapestry of beats, very contemporary sounding but rooted in deep musical legacies. Though familiar it shows how far we have come from the Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Jououka album which was an early attempt to add echo and sound processing to traditional Moroccan music. Unnamed vocalists appear as well as other instruments, but rhythm is the main ingredient. I hear a warbly synth, a violin-like instrument and even bagpipes on echo which sounds very heavy-metal. In fact the last track, "Hattaya," sounds like they are channeling Rush or some other wasted rock band of yore. But let's not overlook the ululating ladies off in the distance.

BALIGH HAMDI
MODAL INSTRUMENTAL POP OF 1970s EGYPT (Sublime Frequencies SF 119CD/119LP)

I didn't think I would get into this, but it's completely entertaining. Yes, there's the expected Egyptian instrumentation of flutes, violins, clay drums, and synths, but also a dose of Bollywood to make it amusing. The 2 LP set is a distillation of 6 or more LPs by Hamdi who started out learning violin as a lad. He is reckoned a key figure in not only modernizing Egyptian and by extension Arabic music but in bringing it to the wider world. Just as pan-Arabism took hold in the 60s and novelists like Nobel prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz were making their mark, Hamdi turned away from his classical training to study accordion, and brought drum kits and saxes into the studio for his compositions. Once guitars added their own twist to quarter-tone Arabic scales, people began to notice. Umm Kulthum recorded one of his earliest songs, propelling him to popular attention. In addition to pop songs he wrote many soundtracks for movies and soap operas, and it is those instrumentals we hear on this selection, including a weird cover of the theme from "Love Story." Hamdi brings in a sitar (the Bollywood connection) and it works well in counterpoint with a dulcimer. There's also a theramin to get some creepy vibes going in conjunction with his Casio keyboard. His studio group, the Diamond Orchestra, included guitar, organ, sax and an accordion which was modified for quarter-tone scales. With many two minute or 90-second cuts interspersed with longer themes, there's variety and grooves aplenty to make this a delight-filled aural trip.

RAED YASSIN
ARCHAEOPHONY (Akuphone AKU1027)

When I put this on I immediately thought there was something wrong: a female voice sings a religious line -- like the muezzin -- then silence, but after a pause it's repeated. Hmmm, what's going on? A glitch in the transfer? Then the singing hits the echo chamber and starts to build layers like early Steve Reich. The second track introduces the three-stringed guimbri and sounds like a live recording made at a festival in the Atlas Mountains. So I resort to looking at the accompanying promo material and discover Yassin is actually Lebanese, and by the third track we get a more Levantine sense of the music, but in a deconstructed post-modern way. The artist, Raed Yassin, who claims to mix Arabic classical with "dark ambient" music plays synth, turntables, zither, and double bass. By "turntables" he means samples. He has taken his stash of ethnomusicology discs as raw material (unlike Brian Eno in Bush of Ghosts or Peter Gabriel in Passion, he does not tell us what these source discs are, other than "a Unesco disc and a 40 LP Japanese box set of Arab music found on EBay"), and added drum machines, and other instruments to collage a tantalizing soundtrack. None of this is permanent anyway, he seems to be saying. The Arabs are well-known for being an oral culture, living in the moment, and not preserving things which is why the printed book came to them so late. Also the music produced by outsiders has a colonial mentality behind it, he suggests, so it's fair game. By the third listen I was hooked and find it very invigorating. Yassin lives in Berlin and also performs with a big band called Praed Orchestra which mixes Egyptian pop with all sorts of other musics. This musical journey makes a nice arc from the morning prayer to the evening prayer and leaves us with a sense of poetry and wonder.

AMMAR 808
MAGHREB UNITED (Glitterbeat GB060CD; also on vinyl)

Bargou08 exploded into the speakers a year ago and shot into my top ten. The group has morphed somewhat but the idea is still there: to take traditional North African music and modernize it with a booming bass courtesy of synth and drum patterns on the TR-808 (a descendant of my namesake the Doctor Rhythm, which was the first and now primitive-sounding drum machine made by Roland). I am not sure who the leader is, but he has assumed the name Ammar 808 and the band as well as the album is called Maghreb United. The TR-808 was only made from 1980 to 83 so is now a vintage instrument, beloved of hiphop artist and those who like to generate their own rhythms rather than using samples. As unification implies, the reach of the album covers the entire Maghreb of North Africa with singers from Morocco (Mehdi Nassouli), Algeria (Sofiane Saidi), and Tunisia (Cheb Hassen Tej). The instruments are a distorted (over-amplified) guimbri, played by Nassouli, gasba flute, and zokra bagpipes. The album is futuristic -- but it is not a bright and rosy future it envisions, rather the grim reality of more of this shit we are enduring now. The world has become fragmented into individuals lost in their own worlds, whereas once there was a diverse yet continuous culture. Borders are erected between countries that were once friendly neighbors who allowed for free flow of people and ideas. The Maghreb was once a giant continuous space embracing many different elements. If we can recognize those differences and still connect we are getting somewhere, and that is Ammar's idea behind this gripping suite.

QAIS ESSAR
THE GHOST YOU LOVE MOST (self-published?)

Essar is an Afghani who lives in Phoenix, Arizona and writes music on his rubab, an ancient stringed lute. He has produced several recordings and been featured in film soundtracks. A song he composed for the Angelina Jolie-produced animated movie The Breadwinner won best original song at the Canadian Screen Awards recently. Cinematic is a good way to describe this album, which has different guests on each track. There's electric bass and the western trap drums give it a familiar grounding, then he brings in Indians on veena, slide guitar and santoor (which is like a hammered dulcimer), and Westerners on 12-string guitars, cellos and harps. Even when a totally Indian soundscape floats into earshot it is soon picked up by the fretless slide and the bass and drums riding it, not into the Thar desert, but along Route 66 from Flagstaff into the Sonora Desert.

THE NILE PROJECT
JINJA (Self-published)

ALSARAH AND THE NUBATONES
MANARA (Wonderwheel Wonder CD30)

Right in the middle of this album is the single, "Ya Watan" and it's a gem. To traditional arabic instruments like oud, trumpet and the clay drums beaten by hand are added some discreet electronic effects on keyboard. The album is a musical quest by Alsarah and her fellow Nubians to find home. Not easy in a country with shifting borders that is half the size it was a couple of decades ago. In modern times the English and French were there and created something called the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan after the French tried to grab the Upper Nile region in 1898 and were rebuffed by the Brits. I was in Juba, then Southern Sudan in 1983 as the army was planning a revolt against the North, because the country was dominated by the arab government in Khartoum and sucking up the oil resources of the South where the black Sudanese live. Consequently after a civil war, still not resolved in the South, the country was cut in half in 2011. The North is still the third largest country in Africa and does have a coast, on the Red Sea, where I did my bit to drink up the last of the alcohol when sharia law was declared. Other than Khartoum and some spectacular ruins there's not much but the Nubian desert with flocks of goats, date palms and smugglers headed to Egypt. This album creates a pleasant aural portrait with either kif or mint tea to augment your listening experience, should you choose. There are some snippets of street sound, radio tuning with static, and other touches that help weave it together into a wonderful journey. Alsarah spent her first 8 years in Khartoum then moved to Yemen and then to Brooklyn, so her quest for home is very real and has been sustained by listening to the old music of her homeland from the 60s and 70s. On tour the Nubatones have played the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, as well as headlining at WOMAD in Australia and gigs in London plus an extended residence in Morocco. There's definitely a pan-Arabic African groove, as evidenced in songs like "Fulani," and despite the smallness of the combo the lush feeling of the big band recordings of Umm Kulthum.

NOURA MINT SEYMALI
ARBINA (Glitterbeat GBCD038)

Traditional Mauretanian music in a not so traditional arrangement for the second international release by this powerhouse quartet. The producer Matthew Tinari is also the trap drummer and along with the stop-tempo bass they bring a rock sensibility to the set. And in the rare moments when her husband's electric guitar is not prominent, Seymali's voice and her ardine playing are clearly rooted in the folk traditions of the Moors. I wonder if her unaccompanied set would be as engaging to Western audiences, but I think the album's success is actually in the Western reframing. "Mohammedoun" contains a familiar riff: it's "Had to cry today" by Blind Faith (listen to the progression at 43 seconds) and throughout this album I hear echoes of other rock songs of my youth, so I assume the guitarist has a similar musical background to mine -- or else I am hallucinating -- even though he is Mauretanian and his wife is a griot, singing traditional songs. The opening cut, "Arbina," invokes the Lord above while "Mohammedoun" is about His man on the spot, known as the Prophet. At first I thought it was "Presence of the Lord," but Winwood reassured me of the right title. There's another tune or nursery rhyme from my childhood bubbling up in here, in "Richa," but so far back I am having a hard time retrieving it. My sense of Jeiche Chighaly's playing is he is more into Fairport Convention than Cream though he likes to rip out the blues riffs. "Ghlana" eases into one of the desert blues we know so well from Tinariwen and the host of others who love the jam: there's two guitars on here, maybe double-tracked since only Chighaly is credited. On "Ghizlane," Noura's voice stands out, soaring above the band in a traditional song about seeing giraffes at the oasis and imagining running after them, then realizing how earthbound we are with our awkward bodies compared to the fleet-footed giant quadruped: "I follow the footsteps to an impossible end."

BASEL RAJOUB
THE QUEEN OF TURQUOISE (JazzVillage JV 570123)

Subtitled "The Soriana project," this album unites some Syrian expatriates with others from the Arabic diaspora in a pensive, almost-mournful set. Given the news from the mound of rock and sand at the right end of the Med it's no wonder, but it's tragic to see a millennia old culture gradually wiped out by ignorance as various world powers try out their military hardware on innocent victims. During the first Iraq War I found an LP by an Iraqi artist called Saadoun al-Bayati; I used to air his "Everybody blames me" on the radio. On this set Basel Rajoub, who studied classical music at the conservatory in Aleppo, leads the group on soprano and tenor sax and also duclar, another woodwind similar to the duduk. If you google "duclar" the first thing to come up is a store selling them with a video of Rajoub improvising. We hear Kenan Adnawi on the oud, Andrea Piccioni on percussion and Feras Charestan on qanun, a zither-like string instrument. Lynn Adib sings on one or two numbers. Rajoub is the main focus: the jazz saxophone is not indigenous to the middle east (or anywhere?) but he has clearly studied John Coltrane which style fits well with Arabic melodies and percussion. This is his third album. For five years the civil war has been raging but now the government of Syria is the main enemy trying to destroy the city of Aleppo. Not every album has to be upbeat all the time. Outside the birds are singing and I smell fragrant flowers.

NOURA MINT SEYMALI
TZENNI (Glitterbeat GBCD/LP 016)

If you put this on the sound system at a blues bar they'd think it was the most down and dirty thing they'd heard. If the bar was in Mauretania (an ancient Berber kingdom that spans the Atlas mountains of southern Morocco and stretches into Algeria), they'd probably recognize the singer as the famous step-daughter of the legendary Dimi Mint Abba, or if they were older, grand-daughter of the also-legendary Mounina. Seymali's father is also a renowned musician, having composed the national anthem as well as creating a notation system for Moorish melodies. Noura's husband is the guitarist Jeiche Ould Chighaly and he is the driving wheel of this music, accompanied by another stringed instrument the harp-like ardine, played by his wife. Chighaly also plays tidinit which is the Mauretanian equivalent of the ngoni. Other than that, electric bass and trap drums complete the power line up. The title means "to spin" and you can imagine a dervish whirlwind stirred up in the tents of Nouakchott once this music kicks in. When you spin you lose control of your senses and become off balance: the music centers you and keeps you turning and your faith in the music holds you up as your senses give in to the power of the tune. Many of the songs are from the traditional repertoire: a lover who thought he was doomed to wander forever finds stability in the love of a woman; a praise song for the prophet Mohammed on his return to Medina after a victory in battle. The recording is clean, even when the vocals are on reverb, and the guitar on full effects pedals, you can still hear the tick of the drumsticks, played by Dakar-based producer Matthew Tinari. He says the drum rhythms are often inspired by traditional patterns played on plates or hand drums, for example, by guests at weddings. So the sound is a collaboration based on many folkloric elements but then updated with the rock and funk ideas of the musicians. While obviously influenced by her mother (Seymali started out as a backing singer), she also credits Oum Kalthoum, cheb Khaled, and even Etta James as inspirations. Her husband's listening includes Mark Knopfler and Hendrix as well as Albert King and Magic Sam.

ROUGH GUIDE TO THE MUSIC OF THE SAHARA (revised version; RGNET 1325)

While it's not as irritatingly pervasive as Afrobeat, Desert Blues has certainly reached saturation level. It's the nature of the music industry (what's left of it) to spot trends and jump on bandwagons, so when there was a flower power wave you suddenly had a zillion second-rate flower power bands, same with "indie rock," "German techno," "Peruvian Cumbia," the aforementioned "Afrobeat," you name it. But then I looked at the playlist for this set and didn't see Bombino, Inerane, Toumast, Tartit, or other familiar names. My first thought was it was licensing issues, then I played it and realized it's a fresh take on desert music and covers not just the Sahara but the Nubian desert sounds of Egypt and Sudan and even gets to Libya and Mauretania. The great desert is unlike anywhere else and being in it is mind-blowing and often surreal. You can lie on the sand and go to sleep with no fear because there are no insects or bugs there. My strongest memories of the African desert are of silence and the night sky (and being lost one day and coming across a valley full of bright green stones that I took to be malachite, scattered everywhere). It's remote and inaccessible which is why we have not plundered its resources yet, and why its traditions have remained vital. Etran Finatawa, who are a known quantity, kick off with "Kel Tamasheck," (confusingly, the title of an album by another guitar band, Terakaft), but we don't dally long in the Western Sahara, because, after a trip to Mali with Samba Touré we get the lush Egyptian arrangement of Ali Hassan Kuban and "Mabruk," and a bit later the more folkloric and heavily percussive Mahmoud Fadl. The Toureg on here (Toureg de Fewet) are not electrified Hendrix wannabees but traditional performers, with lutes, krakrebs and handclaps. You can check out their Musique Du Monde album, from which "Chetma," included here is taken, at this site. There's a smoking hot new track from Anansy Cissé whose Mali Overdrive I reviewed only last month. Rounding out the main disc is Salamat, again featuring percussionist Mahmoud Fadl, with some lively horns playing a round.

The bonus disc is by Mamane Barka and features him on the biram, a five-stringed lute played on the shores of Lake Chad in Eastern Niger by the Boudouma people. This was almost a lost sound, but Barka, a scholar and teacher (who had mastered a different instrument, the ngurumi), met the last surviving player and got him to hand down the tradition. He learned the old master's repertoire and received his blessing (and own instrument) before his teacher Boukar Tar, passed away. Backed by a percussionist, Barka rocks out on the large acoustic instrument.

ADNAN JOUBRAN
BORDERS BEHIND (World Village 479084)

I recently got a promo or rather a download link to an intangible set that featured Trio Joubran, backing an Arab artist (actually a Belgian via Jordan) who shall remain nameless. Since I really liked their earlier CDs I was keen to hear it, but sadly it turned out to be rubbish, pure and simple. Why mess with a winning formula? The audience doesn't tire, it expands (maybe stretches a bit, but doesn't yawn). So I was pleased to get a new disc solely by Adnan, one of the Joubrans, and am glad to report it is spot on. There is a clarity to this, a sharpness, a real acuity as if they are listening as much as playing. When I say "they," I should point out there is only one of the Joubran brothers on here, Adnan on oud (also on percussion and voice), and a line up that includes tablas, cello and cajon, with a guest appearance from Jorge Pardo, renowned Spanish jazz/flamenco accompanist, on sax and flute (on four tracks). The mixture of Spain and Arabia is a natural one: Pardo has played with the al-Andalusian Ensemble as well as the recently deceased Paco de Lucia, and you sense Adnan is keen to show he can riff with the best of them on this outing. The title at first glance suggests Joubran's native Palestine, but then you think of the musical borders he has crossed to perform with Indians and Spaniards, but ultimately the borders are metaphysical ones, between what's been accomplished and what can be imagined. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

QAT, COFFEE & QAMBUS
RAW 45s FROM YEMEN (Dust to Digital DTD30)

Among their recent spate of releases, Dust to Digital include nine engrossing 45rpm records from Yemen, a country than managed to avoid all external influences on its music. Right from the intense opening track you know you are in another place entirely. The backing to this song is beaten sheet metal in a tunnel (that's what it sounds like to me), to create a mechanical "train is coming" sound, that has an incredible rhythmic ebb and flow. On top of this a woman sings short phrases, "Who enters the sea of passion?" The liner notes tell us it's a copper tray balanced on the finger tips, and the performance is typical of those given to accompany qat chewing sessions. Qat is a shiny green plant with the same properties as coca leaf when chewed constantly. 80% of the water in drought-stricken Yemen goes to its cultivation. The Qambus of the title is a stringed lute which has been replaced by the oud although its tones were softer and subtler, as can be heard here, especially on the last track, "Night stars watcher," by Ahmad al Haraz. This 38 minute album is just a sampler of the many styles of music originating in Yemen: it is well-presented with translations, good photos and background notes on the tracks, though it appears the compiler Chris Menist (a DJ in Bangkok) was not aware of Yemeni music before short trips to Sana'a, actually looking for Ethiopian music, where he picked up these discs. Nevertheless it is an intriguing slice of an unknown musical culture.

NASHAZ
NASHAZ (Self-published)

This is my new go-to disc when I want an hour of mellow instrumental music -- which is quite often. From the cover you'd think "Arabic," and it does have the Arabo-Andalusian sound, with lute and the little ceramic hand drums, even some Arabic-sounding flutes, but there are also what I would classify as jazz musicians on here playing sax and trumpet. And Arabic modes (the maqam) lend themselves well to freeform improvisation on brass. Nashaz is the brainchild of Brian Prunka, a guitarist who heard the oud and was hooked. (The story is an Egyptian taxi driver in New Orleans told him he ought to check it out!) I have to confess I really don't like jazz guitar. I don't mean Django or the early guys, but post-Charlie Christian jazz guitar turns me off. The oud on the other hand I can take in any quantity. Early on (before we even knew we were listening to "world music") I got Hamza El Din's brilliant album, Escalay: the Water Wheel (Nonesuch, 1971), and later on I discovered he lived in Berkeley (a lot easier on the constitution than Sudan) so I got to hear him perform in intimate small settings. Prunka studied with Simon Shaheen and moved to Brooklyn (from New Orleans) to pursue his music. The name of the group is an in-joke as "Nashaz" is Arabic for discordant or out-of-tune. Kenny Warren on trumpet has played with Slavic Soul Party and has studied Balkan and Turkish music before getting into the maqam mode. He does those little Milesian squeaks, then pops in the mute for a sustained out-breath. Nathan Herrera on alto sax, flute and bass clarinet has studied Indian as well as Macedonian music, he brings a great ear to the session -- I dig his warm bass clarinet sound a lot. Apostolis Sideris on the bass is the Greek contingent (No, it's not the Mothers of Invention: no Jimmy Carl Black!). George Mel on percussion is a jazz drummer from Tbilsi, and Vin Scialla, who is also listed as percussionist, is another jazz and world music guy with a track record. So they have a wide range of backgrounds and a focus on this mode that is exciting and really works as jazz or Arabic music, wherever you fancy filing it. It's got under my skin: I am eating cucumber salad and drinking mint tea!

DABKE
SOUND OF THE SYRIAN HOURAN (Sham Palace Sham02CD)

It's amazing to see that wherever there's strife in the world the indomitable human spirit still makes music. A recent manifestation is all those Touareg guitar bands coming out of the Malian desert after years in refugee camps. The Houran is an area of Southern Syria and northwestern Jordan, starting below Damascus, and this is the party and wedding music they play when they have something to celebrate. At first it reminds you of Rai: it has that pulse and insistence. Featured here is the mejwiz, a double-reed flute made out of bamboo that makes a shrill buzzing sound like a goat trapped on a rocky precipice. Except this is a highly accomplished dancing goat, okay, forget the analogy, we already ate the goat. The players are adept at circular breathing so it doesn't quit and its relentless bagpipe drone is backed by an array of thudding hand drums of varied timbre. Inevitably synthetic rhythms have been introduced, though you still hear those ceramic drums. Today there's even sampled mejwiz, but I can't tell if that particular sound is on here, which is a compilation drawn from cassettes sold in the region over the last 15 years. It has the mad energy of the Joujouka rave-ups we all know and love. The vocals are treated with echo (sometimes too much) which gives you the impression of being at a huge outdoor gathering. The rhythm is relentless. Aiwa, party on like there's no tomorrow, Syrians!

PUTUMAYO PRESENTS ARABIC BEAT (Putumayo P320-SL)

If you ask me, or anyone else, what the best Putumayo comp is, most folk would agree it's their 2001 Arabic Groove, which cruised along the North African coast as effortlessly as Michael Jackson moonwalking backwards. And it's backwards we go to recapture that mood with this new effort. Ali Slimani is back, as a good luck talisman, with a similar sound -- "Lirah remix" -- to that which kicked off the earlier entry. But this disc is less intense. (Well, we have all aged at least a decade since then.) Jalal el Hamdaoui from Morocco kicks off with the famous snake-charmer melody by Borodin, best known as "Stranger in Paradise" from the musical Kismet. But he just repeats the head riff so it doesn't evolve (to "Somewhere in space, I hang suspended..."); instead it repeats and fades and we are into a tortured, moody piece (also Moroccan): "Saab Alyia" from Samira Saeid. Ahmed Soultan's "Itim" could be considered soul music (or whatever nueva name there is for that genre). Choubène (i.e., "Young people") is back on the Med with a Rai number that has a dose of funk in the bass and drums while the synth plays homage to Gap band (there seems to be a kora on here, but it might be a sample). Zein al-Jundi from Syria (now safely stowed in Texas) has gypsy kings flamenco guitar, parisian cafe accordeon and a whole range of other influences saying, "Get me outta Basra!" If you crave that disco bomp-badomp from the first Arabic Groove it comes back for the big finish with Cheb Amar's "Lala Torkia." As usual with the 'Mayo label this CD is barely over half an hour. Not long enough to start to bug you, but enough to engage you and make you look for more.

SPY FROM CAIRO
ARABADUB (WONDERCD-II)

Moreno Visi, aka The Spy from Cairo, goes from strength to strength. I really dug his previous outing and now he has returned with his masterwork: Arabadub, a set of Arabic dub on which he programs the drums and plays bass as well as all the middle Eastern instruments, showing he is very accomplished. Apart from oud and saz there is something called a chifteli, perhaps the dulcimer-like instrument we hear, a longer skinnier relative of the oud. According to his website he has remixed everyone from Baaba Maal to Billie Holliday to Novalima. He definitely has some fine chops, both as an engineer and a performer. The title puns on rub-a-dub style as well as Aladdin's lamp rubbing. The Cairo aspect is heard in the hovering strings which punctuate the tunes with a big blast of warm air, reminiscent of the Om Kaltoum sound (recently recreated by Youssou), but when the lighter chifteli takes flight it's more Arabo-Andalusian, thus he takes us on a trip across the entire Mediterranean. This is a very satisfying hour of music and has no flat spots (unlike the predecessor which was less consistent). Guests add crazed accordion and uncredited Arabic vocals. I can tell this is going to be a favourite for a long time.