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CD Review
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The Montreal Mirror, CD Review >>
The bad boy of raï, punk rock’s man in the medina, gravelly Franco-Algerian Taha has been straddling the Mediterranean for two decades now, grafting together the elegance and ornamentation of Arabic pop, thumping European club sounds and swaggering, in-your-face American rock. He hit the radar in ’86 with a Maghrebi-flavoured, Front National-baiting new wave cover of Charles Trenet’s anthemic “Douce France,” included here. Since then, with his constant collaborator, Steve Hillage of Gong, Taha’s made his music more than the sum of its parts, something rich, rugged and righteous. Key tracks are the titular, kick-ass Clash cover, the sun-bleached “Bent Sahra” and “Jungle Fiction,” a salute to Lebanese-American surf-guitar potentate Dick Dale. 8/10
-by Rupert Bottenberg 07/10/08 >> go there
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