IBTIHALAT - SAFA
2021, Vinyl Design for Artist Safa, London
Situated between London and Beirut; architect, researcher and musician Safa draws from a layered history of musical invocations - Moroccan and West African Gnawa, North African Rai, Sea Music, Laywa and Samiri from the Arabian Peninsula and pre-Arab Amazigh traditions - to build ultra-modernist structures that don't erase the past, but embrace it.
IBTIHALAT is a wildly futuristic album of chromium-plated sound design, hi-end micro-sampling techniques, algorithmic psychoacoustics and field recordings, with a strong grasp of history, tradition and complex rhythmic structures. It's an album that never loses its momentum with precision-engineered experimental club velocity - while simultaneously drawing parallels with ritual music and dance traditions that stretch into medieval times and beyond.
Situated between London and Beirut; architect, researcher and musician Safa draws from a layered history of musical invocations - Moroccan and West African Gnawa, North African Rai, Sea Music, Laywa and Samiri from the Arabian Peninsula and pre-Arab Amazigh traditions - to build ultra-modernist structures that don't erase the past, but embrace it.
IBTIHALAT is a wildly futuristic album of chromium-plated sound design, hi-end micro-sampling techniques, algorithmic psychoacoustics and field recordings, with a strong grasp of history, tradition and complex rhythmic structures. It's an album that never loses its momentum with precision-engineered experimental club velocity - while simultaneously drawing parallels with ritual music and dance traditions that stretch into medieval times and beyond.