Live at Another Sky Festival

Recorded live at London’s Café Oto during their Another Sky Festival in September 2023, this is a hypnotic and exhilarating display of the electronic brilliance of the Tunisian producer and arranger Sofyann Ben Youssef. Known for his love of the vintage drum machine, TR-808, he worked with Tunisian folk-rockers Bargou 08, providing bass rhythms that were matched against traditional instruments, before using the same technique to re-work songs from right across the North African Maghreb region on the 2018 AMMAR 808 album Maghreb United. Five years later, on Super Stambeli (feat Belhassen Mihoub), he added beats and electronica to music from an ancient Tunisian trance ritual. This set includes music from both AMMAR 808 albums, along with new tracks including ‘Zawali Fitness Club’, that are segued together into an almost continuous piece (there is no pause until after the seventh track), in which wailing flutes, chanting voices and drums are matched against beats and electronica in a thrilling blitz of the ancient and modern. Play it loud.