Destination Halal

Album Review

Amira Saqati's third album follows the path explored by numerous releases on the Barbarity label, blending traditional Moroccan melodies, singing, and instrumentation with modern pulsing electronic beats and sonic overlays aplenty. Though singer and multi-instrumentalist Youssef el Mejjad and programmer/samplers/arranger/producer/mixer Pat Jabbar are the main forces behind the act, they get lots of help from about a dozen other players, singers, and rappers. It's a dizzying swirl, both taken as a whole and within many of the individual tracks. Sad North African winding melodies may often be at the forefront (and are never far away from the core), but there are so many separate components employed and sampled that it would take several paragraphs to list them all. They include bee-buzzing traditional string instruments, haunting female backup vocals, occasional singing in French, electronic dance-rap, hard rock guitar, reggae-influenced vocals, dub-influenced effects, flutes, oud, and uneasily trance-like waves of electronic sound. If this kind of stuff isn't a main dish of yours, it might be just too rich a helping all at once, particularly on a disc that goes on for a good 68 minutes. If you do like it, it's certainly diverse and unpredictable in its shift of moods, and more effective as a segueing soundscape than for the quality of its individual cuts.