sun 24/11/2024

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

Ahwar: unfolds and glides with a rare beauty

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.

Coming on like an Arabic Björk, Nadah serves up abstract grooves and laid-back rhythms that weld together the ancient and the modern, the Eastern and the Western. Ahwar brings classical Egyptian sounds, jazzy atmospheres and loop-fueled electronica production with abstract time signatures. It’s a beautiful and unexpected treat that has no interest in following the usual Western rock template, but envelopes the listener in a warm North African ambience.

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.

Ahwar is a slow-burning sonic jewel

rating

Editor Rating: 
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)

Explore topics

Share this article

Add comment

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters