Ammar 808 is the electronic/organic project of Denmark-based Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef and his new album Club Tounsi explores the “vibrant folk tradition of his native Tunisia” and bringing a dazzling combination of digital backbone from the Roland TR-808 drum machine (the ‘808’ in ‘Ammar 808’) alongside some of Tunisia’s top musicians to bring the colour and flavour of his homeland to Ben Youseff’s mastery of the dancefloor; something that’s no stranger to his native land as he says,
“On the album there is a rhythm that keeps coming back. It’s called fezzani and it’s without contest the Tunisian rhythm par excellence. It exists only in Tunisia. As soon as we start the fezzani medley in wedding parties everybody’s hands are in the air. It comes down to the dance floor. It’s for the last part of the night when everybody’s super-hot and getting all sweaty!”
From the opening bounce of ‘Douri Douri’ you can feel your body getting ready to jump, sway, and jiggle, with Ammar 808 as the invisible puppet master causing your feet to move and your hands shoot upwards and start waving uncontrollably. Tracks are built around a solid core; a 4-on-the-floor beat that Ammar 808 dresses up in some bespoke musical finery from the fizzing percussion such as the sharp crack of a darbuka that he will often loop into tracks or let fly solo, or by bringing in instruments not usually associated with dance music such as the mezoued goatskin bagpipes, which adds to the trance-inducing feeling of the album.
“I want to grab energies from the past, from the root of the music and then project them to the future, it’s like a bridging between places and times.”
The marriage of the past with the present creates an mesmerising whole. Hypnotic repetition allows you to be drawn deep into the heart of the music, further aided by Ammar 808 drawing on Sufi devotional hymns, malouf melodies, Arabic scales and ancient folksong. One of the most spectacular elements on the album is the singing of Mariem Bettouhami, a lyrical singer who studied at the Institute of Music in Tunis (as did Sofyann Ben Youssef), Mahmoud Lahbib who is steeped in the pure Mezoued tradition, and Brahim Riahi, who has a background in Sufi singing. Hearing Bettouhami’s voice on ‘Aman Aman’ is remarkable as Ammar 808 turns what was an ancient folk song into a haunting present-day lament (see the video below).
This is no simple EDM album where the producer let’s the tech do the heavy lifting; Ammar 808 is a craftsman placing sounds and beats together with exquisite precision. Nothing is out of place and the fact that your overriding feeling is to push the furniture back in the room and dance yourself to exhaustion belies the amount of work that must have gone into making it. There is true joy in how the modern and the traditional have been brought together and Club Tounsi is as much a love letter to Sofyann Ben Youssef’s Tunisian homeland as it is to the heady world of the nightclub.
Ammar 808 Socials: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp | YouTube
Club Tounsi is released on Glitterbeat Records: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram |YouTube
I also wanted to mention the artwork for the album It was conceived and designed by French visual artist Saint Loric and realised as by Pauline Roquefeuil who specialises making mirrorballs.
Review by Paul F Cook
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