RhoDeo 1112 Roots

Hello, it's back across the desert today to a country officially bordering Europe, Marocco it is here today's first album came about. It was the summer of 1983 in morocco. the polisario guerillas were operating in the southern sahara and the mood was tense in the arab world. the government of king hassan was suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. checkpoints were everywhere along the highways. aids was the new disease, and Alan Bishop went on a roadtrip to record the sounds and atmosphere, result an almost 55 min long collage that sucks you in. How different is the second album recorded 20 years later, this time there's real fusion of' south and west, It's still clearly Moraccan but the dubghost of Bill Laswell is clearly present, clever use of studio possibilities have some exclaim it's one of the fusion roots albums of the decade..


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Out of the thousands of tedious archival record labels popping up recently in this accelerated age of information overload, it's great to find a label as fascinating as Sublime Frequencies. Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls created Sublime Frequencies as an outlet to release video and sound recordings collected in his travels around the globe. Bishop's release schedule thus far has vividly illustrated his view of the third world as an alien landscape, an enticing ethnic cacophony of marginalized cultures and traditions, obscure music, vibrant environmental noises, hallucinogenic otherness and unraveled threads of the human narrative.
Alan Bishop neatly sidesteps all of the tired implications of "world music" by refusing to editorialize; he simply releases unadulterated vintage recordings, impromptu radio collages, untreated field recordings and personal home videos. The recordings are quickly slapped onto the digital format and released with a minimum of post-production or fussy packaging. Radio Morocco is the seventh CD released on the Sublime Frequencies imprint, and it's also one of the most intriguing. Culled from recordings of radio transmissions intercepted all along the Moroccan coast in the summer of 1983, Radio Morocco is a kaleidoscopic trip through French-Moroccan pop, French and Arabic news reports, Berber trance-folk, Arabic divas, Middle Eastern orchestral music, European new wave, hypnotic jajouka and shortwave radio noise. Interspersed throughout are live recordings of Arabic divas like the legendary Oum Koulthoum, who perform for an enraptured crowd of men who zealously shout "Allah!" at the end of each sexually charged refrain. At various times, Radio Morocco operates as a sonic avatar, an audio time capsule, a free-form diary through the crossroads of Western Africa, or expressionist collage.

Although Bishop clearly sees Sublime Frequencies fulfilling the same sort of archival musical preservation function of a label like Smithsonian Ethnic Folkways, Radio Morocco simply doesn't work on that level. None of the performers or musical styles that we hear throughout the disc are identified in the liner notes, so its historical value is questionable. Instead, Radio Morocco is a postmodern collage of cultures alternately melding and clashing, replicating the fragmented memories of a unique time and place. Upon repeated listens, these sounds can download into the listener's brain as an anti-virus to an unimaginative, safe and homogenized Western culture that daily threatens to erase our uniqueness and cultural heritage forever.



VA - Radio Morocco (84 123mb)

01 - Radio Tangier Internationale (3:42)
02 - Quartertone Winds (5:20)
03 - Radio Chechaouen (7:28)
04 - Chante Du Tamri (5:52)
05 - Radio Fes (6:30)
06 - The Medina of Sound 9(:23)
07 - Radio Marrakesh (4:58)
08 - The Color of Frequency (6:24)
09 - Radio Essaouria (4:58)


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Azzddine is Azzddine Ouhnine, a Moroccan oud player and composer based in Rabat, Massafat his latest recording. The vocalist does triple time, also jumping on oud and darbouka for this 63-minute dubbed-out sojourn. The range of influence on these 14 tracks is tremendously expansive: hip-hop, reggae, trip-hop and other digital modalities, as well as traditional Moroccan music. It is a heavily synthesized effort with only spare classical instrumentation, although a very ancient feel reveals itself. Most of this is due to Ouhnine's able virtuosity on oud; if you thought Hamza El Din jamming with the Kronos Quartet was innovative, we've entered a whole other realm here. Background vocal assistance by Noura and Naima add a pleasant feminine undertone, while Boualem's rap on "Britou" lends an urban edge.

Massafat, however, belongs to Laswell. Ouhnine is obviously front and center, but it's the production work that takes this from solid to exceptional. Recorded in Africa and New Jersey and glued together in Basel, Switzerland, the heavy, heady bass tones pulse with constant determination. While Laswell has worked on the Moroccan soundscape before Massafat is new territory. Fuzzy, driven guitars appear all over, as on the rather hyperreal "Ana Ou Enta," but never loses itself in the thick walls that genre can exhibit. Even in the midst of seeming chaos, subtlety prevails.

The album is absolutelly flavored with the right amount of spice with excellentelly orchestrated vocalz and string arangement and various egyptian, morrocan, arabic & persian percission and piano, then they throw in the ablolute best available effects and processors to bring out that amazing dub sound everything and everysong is filled to the brim with slammin dub moog keyboards amazing drum programmin percussion, pure dub style arabic vocals. There are no standout cuts here. Laswell is taking Marrakech to whole new levels. As for Azzddine Ouhnine, he couldn't have picked a better introduction to the world outside North Africa, one we only hope he continues to explore.



Azzddine (with Bill Laswell) - Massafat (04 145mb)

01 Srir F'al Houbb (4:06)
02 Britou (3:46)
03 Ana Ou Enta (4:556)
04 Takassim (4:40)
05 Ah Ya Zamane (4:19)
06 Fine (3:18)
07 Al Mouktab (3:54)
08 Droub Al Lil (5:31)
09 Koun Shaqiqi (6:04)
10 Goa Rozali (4:28)
11 Rozali (3:44)
12 Jina (5:07)
13 Anta Fbali (5:11)
14 Ya Nass (4:00)


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