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Sample Track 1:
"Rock el Casbah" from Tékitoi
Sample Track 2:
"Winta" from Tékitoi
Sample Track 3:
"Dima (Always)" from Tékitoi
Buy Recording:
Tékitoi
Layer 2
CD Review

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Seattle Weekly, CD Review >>

RACHID TAHA
Tékitoi
(Wrasse)

Rachid Taha is the best rock star alive. An Algerian who records in France and London and Cairo, Taha's music is Godzilla-big: Arabic music is his touchstone, and because he loves us, he throws in new wave and funk and punk and pop and techno and every other genre in the world. "Lli Fat Mat!" (which means "What Is in the Past Is Dead and Gone!") starts like Algerian raï, but the metallic guitar riff (courtesy of Gong guru Steve Hillage) gives it a tougher edge than you're going to hear playing in the background at the Falafel Hut. New genres seem to emerge with each new song: "H'asbu-Hum" has a second-line shuffle and some slithery bass, and "Nah'seb" is disco dub thrash with a mandolute and some stomping drums. Throughout, Taha makes it work by sounding absolutely committed to every single song. His vocal performance on "Safi," a condemnation of totalitarianism (and maybe Americanism, too), is epic in great ways, a mutter to a scream and back again. He gets smooth on the sexy boil of "Shuf." And with "Rock el Casbah," rocking the Clash song hard in Arabic and English, Taha steps right up to a legacy that might rightly be his. MATT CIBULA

 01/26/05 >> go there
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