Acid Arab have made so much progress. When Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho launched in 2012, their “electro-oriental” project seemed a little short of ideas. And yet, the Parisian combo have managed to completely reinvent the wheel by ridding their music of any clichés and surrounding themselves with talent. Following heaps of concerts and their debut album Musique de France, released in 2016 on Crammed Discs featuring a big cast (Rachid Taha, Sofiane Saidi, Rizan Saïd, A-Wa), the duo became a gang, joining the talented Pierrot Casanova and Nicolas Borne in the studio and keyboard player Kenzi Bourras on stage to give an Algerian raï touch.
Once again, the duo open up their house for their latest album Jdid (meaning “new” in Arabic); we find guests on nearly all the tracks, including Sofiane Saidi (exploring her dark side on Rimitti Dor), the Tuareg singers Les Filles de Illighadad on the wacky track Soulan (where sounds from the stony desert are intertwined with a pulsing electronic beat), and even Ammar 808, the Tunisian TR-808 specialist on Rajel. The acid rhythms mix well with the mizwad (a type of bagpipe) and the slick production creates a big sound. You can just imagine what it would do to a dancefloor. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz