Racines new album Arilos Mennar is a collection of tracks driven by pulsating rhythms and intoxicating beats that it is hard not to move to. From the opening ‘Market Miracolo’ you would have to be made of granite not to find yourself immediately perked up and motivated to tap your feet, bob your head and start chair swaying.
Racines are the duo of Rokeya, a London-based Indo-Italian-Welsh producer, performer, selector and curator, and Anissa, an Italian-Algerian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Together they have created a heady mixture of modern and traditional flavours. There are so many elastic sounds flexing throughout; drum and bass influences, electronics and percussion, with the modern and traditional intertwining in a joyous dance. The press release says, “the sonic dimension is crafted with care and precision. The percussion of Taha Ennouri and Ali Belazi amplifies the ritual; the wind instruments of Carmelo Colajanni — duduk, bagpipe, bansuri, arghul, overtone flute — open evocative spaces; Simone Santarelli’s oud adds timbral depth. On the track “Nari”, the production of the mysterious Borda delivers a hypnotic explosive force that fully embodies the universe of the album.”
The ‘Arilos’ of the title are pomegranate seeds and ‘Mennar’ comes from the Algerian Arabic and means ‘from fire’, meant as a “primal, generative feminine force”. The album is packed with life just like the pomegranate bursts forth with a bounty of seeds when cut open. Fun fact, the French term for pomegranate is ‘grenade’ which gave its name to the weapon.
The ululation of ‘Buttana di to mà’ adds to the glory infused in the music. Each track builds into a trance-like state; sometimes bubbling along like a stream and then raging like white water on others. Some elements of the percussion pound out the beat while others fizz away moving the tempo in multiple directions to excite the brain and trigger muscles which respond with movement. Alongside the lighter-than-air sense of tracks like ‘Market Miracolo’, ‘Nari’ and ‘Fluir,’ there are dark wellsprings of emotion on ‘Meken Merteh’, ‘Aman’ and ‘Taqfiz’ which feel like echoes bouncing off the walls of a subterranean cavern. Then on the closing track, ‘Rumman’, it feels like you have climbed up a mountain to watch the perfect sunrise.
There is deep gratification from the beauty and power that drives this album. The percussion represent the synapses firing and creating impulses that demand movement, but the beating heart of the album is led by Rokeya and Anissa and the amazing world they have created on Arilos Mennar: fecund and exploding with life just like the pomegranate.
Racines: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
Released by Locomotiv Records
Review by Paul F Cook
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List