Jessica Bab; Lars Dencik; Jonas Eklöf; Alexander Freudenthal; Jessika Gedin; Kenneth Hermele; Gabriel Itkes-Sznap Bokförlaget Faethon (2021) Kovakantinen kirja
Let go. Fall in. Follow the spiral, and find your centre. Move and whirl, headbang and hair whip, into a place that is out there and deep within, an altered state where minds open, boundaries fall away and trust - in values, principles, ourselves - is rediscovered, made real.
Welcome, then, to the world of Swaken, the highly anticipated second album by French-Moroccan power quartet, Bab L' Bluz. Recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire, England, written partly in Morocco - the birthplace of frontwoman Yousra Mansour - and mostly across a world tour that took them from Adelaide, Barcelona and New York to Essaouira in Morocco, Lomé in Togo and Dougga in Tunisia. Eleven tracks that spark and pulse with kinetic, pedal-to-the-metal energy.
Mansour's melismatic voice has never sounded so forceful, or the riffage from her electric awisha lute so mighty. Her bandmates (on everything from keyboards, flutes and electric guembri to drums, backing vocals and qraqeb castanets) now interact with what might be telepathy, their playing skilled and tight.
This is ancient-to-future music, rooted as much in psychedelic blues, funk and rock as in the trancey, propulsive rhythms of northern Africa's Maghreb: Gnawa, Amazigh, Hassani and Houara music. The popular street music known as Chaabi, in which the word 'swaken' means to visit another dimension, as well as the space in which two dimensions overlap.
Losing yourself to find yourself is a central tenet of Swaken, an album whose warm analogue sound nods to such '70s rock icons as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Nass El Ghiwane, Morocco's very own Rolling Stones, social justice warriors who mixed western rock and folk with a trance aesthetic influenced - as is that of Bab L' Bluz - by Gnawa lilas, the all-night healing rituals intended for sacred spirit possession.
