Lekhfa الإخفا

Released September 22, 2017 via Mostakell, Lekhfa brings together Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, three names who had already turned heads in alternative Arabic music through solo work and high-profile collaborations. They first met at a seaside cabin in Alexandria, then built the record through residencies in Amman, Cairo and Beirut, all of it around the dystopian poetry of Mido Zoheir, one of the most prominent Egyptian poets of his generation. Lekhfa is how Egyptian colloquial says the word for concealment.

Saleh sings, Abu Ghazaleh sings and plays ouds, buzuq, mizmar and synths, and Louca handles beat loops, electronics, keys and slide guitar, with Khaled Yassine on drums and percussion and Mahmoud Waly on bass. Saleh's rasp and Abu Ghazaleh's tenor trade lines and stack into chant-like choruses over keyboard harmony, and the dance passages lock into trance, Sufi samples colliding with electro-shaabi rhythm, sharpest on "Ekaa Maksour." From "Kont Rayeh" through "Mazzikaw Khof" and "Woshoush El Leil," Zoheir's poems run through the structure like a spine: grit, beauty and an off-kilter theatre built to be sat with and returned to.

Lekhfa sounds like the morning after 2011, disillusion sung straight-faced behind a clown's mask. It anchored the post-2010 wave of Arab experimental music, and Songlines gave it five stars and called it a contender for the most important Arabic recording of its decade. Recorded at One Hertz Studio in Beirut, mixed by Khyam Allami, mastered by John Dent at Loud Mastering in Bristol.

12" black vinyl, mint, factory shipped unsealed.