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05 Wallah Testahel Ya Albi feat. Hayat Sabry
05 Wallah Testahel Ya Albi feat. Hayat Sabry
Description
Nancy Mounir’s debut album, Nozhet El Nofous, is a remarkable communion with ghosts. Moody, hypnotic, and sneakily catchy, the album—whose title means “Promenade of the Souls'' in Arabic—explores microtonality, non-metered rhythms, and bold vulnerability through a musical dialogue between Mounir’s own arrangements and the sounds of archival recordings of once-famed singers from Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. Adding her own ambient arrangements over voices haunted with passion and desire as she creates a sound that is warmly familiar but utterly new. On the album, Mounir slips into the gaps left by the lost frequencies of the aging recordings, finding space for counterpoint and harmony in a traditional sound built on monophony. Elegant melodies unfold in measured gestures as Mounir—who plays most of the instruments herself —revels in the plaintive intonations and brash lyrics of the departed singers. With layers enmeshed together, it’s at times hard to pin down when the past ends and the present begins, but beneath it all is a liberating attitude of defiance that feels timeless. Just consider the album highlight “Ana Bas Saktalak,” in which Mounir’s Theremin and violin wail with feeling over the taunts of singer Fatma Serry, whose delicious promises of romantic vengeance echo through a century-old murk of gramophone decay: “Your day will come … You’ll beg for us to reunite but I will refuse.” Nozhet El Nofous is brilliant in the way it explores the techniques and perspectives of a more freewheeling time period in Arabic music, before Arabic maqam (modal systems) and other musical foundations were standardized by the Middle East’s cultural power brokers in the early 1930s. As she summons a rich, atmospheric landscape of tone and texture, Mounir engages an older generation of musical rebels in a creative dialogue across time and space—and the results are stunning in their ambition and beauty. Credits Mixed by Adham Zidan (The Invisible Hands, Alan Bishop, Nadah El Shazly, Maurice Louca). Mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, Slowdive, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Deerhunter, Nicolás Jaar, Diamanda Galás). Artwork by Egyptian filmmaker and photographer Ahmad Abdalla, with original typography and design by Salma Shamel.