CD: Nadah El Shazly - Ahwar | reviews, news & interviews
CD: Nadah El Shazly - Ahwar
CD: Nadah El Shazly - Ahwar
A beautiful debut that’s straight out of Cairo
Nadah El Shazly may have started her musical journey by singing Misfits covers in Cairo’s underground scene, but her debut album offers something altogether more tasty and esoteric – as those who saw her at this summer’s Supersonic Festival will already know.
Opening track “Afqid Adh-Dharkira (I lose memory)” has mangled and warped vocals and a bowed double bass drone twisting through an eerie soundscape. A guitar twangs, horns bust forth and fade away, while drum fills randomly punctuate its woozy atmosphere, but Ahwar is no free-form art piece. “Barzakh (Limen)” and “Palmyra” lay down a slow and deliberate shuffle with Nadah’s sung-spoken vocals floating around a groove that is understated and warm but also strange and otherworldly.
El Shazly’s cover of Sayyid Darwish’s “Ana ‘Ishiqt (Once I loved)” is a gently bowed drone with occasional atonal jazzy squawks. In fact, her haunting and sultry vocals need no translation, as they tell of love and betrayal over strangely captivating sounds. It’s a widescreen trip that offers all kinds of unexpected paths and fades into “Koala”, with its stoned gait and a strange, off-kilter melody of horns and brass. Almost Philip Glass-like, it builds and bubbles away, before winding down with the sparse and atmospheric desert lament of “Mahmiya (Protectorate)”.
Ahwar is a slow-burning sonic jewel that is esoteric but also revelatory as it unfolds and glides with some rare beauty.
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