ZOHRA

secret google keep codes

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zohra.jpg

take country music which already seems psychedelic to the urban audio mind, add dramatic video effects, multiply by the bad-math pile-up of several compression codecs.

this is first Algerian Berber material i’ve posted here, all the other stuff has been Moroccan Berber. Clip Kabyle a top-notch videoblog for Kabyle pop. This next video comes to us from 1989, a few years before the videographers tamed their landscape with a sense of scale.

the clip below features the same artist, Hamidouche, in concert. Note the live mix levels: the rock drumkit is buried, you can’t even hear the cymbals. the galloping, tonal darbouka playing is foregrounded. it’s a nice alternative to standard rock sound-level conventions.

DUBS

This Thursday I’ll be DJing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. That sudden world city.

I wrote a longer post but the machine ate it. This song – Berber vocoder mountain pop with dapper strings – has nothing to do with the Persian Gulf.

Najmate el Rif – Diwana (fassiphone)

buyable, sort of. On the cover art below, a woman tries to hide her titillation and subsequent shock upon stumbling into the Slave Leia Appreciation Society. A chunky photoshop chorus unites the gayish singers beneath her.

 La caravane du Rif

ATLAS IMPRESSIONISTIK

“Don’t ask me about any of these Berber cassettes,” said Rachid’s asssitant at Nassiphone (BCN’s best shop for Maghrebi sound) as he hefted a milkcrate from behind the counter. “I know as much as you do.” Meaning: very little.

the cover of this cassette depicts Mr Tamount seated, a capoed & fretted banjo loose in his hands. The orange photoshop blur behind him anticipates vocoders and drum machines coded into Berber patterns. Imazighen.

Idriss Tamount – ? (Box Music)

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For those who prefer less processed roots…

Amazigh band and dancers in the Atlas foothills, scattering timeless sound into the air with generator-powered amps. I enjoy watching the notion of a mainstream dissolve into a trillion scattered data-bites. Let’s dance on a red rug in wilderness!

The best part about YouTube is the impressionistic quality of its compression algorhythms… YouTube is always more storytelling than documentary. Suggests, does not inform.

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In this clip, a string player & vocalist the size of Godzilla perform over a rich evergreen forest while alien geometries intersect the landscape. Visuals a strange but not unsatisfying partner for the ensemble’s Berber folklorix.