Safa flexes a percussive palette that is weighted in bass and granular soundscapes. For fans of Rian Treanor and Gabor Lazar will feel right at home, although Safa’s characteristics are a different take on elasticated figures and whilst may seem like a comfortable entry—this is only the beginning.
Unapologetic sequences that unnerve
My reviews come in ebb and flows, partly due to schedules, although sometimes I just have to drop what I am doing and start writing about what I have in my ears at that very moment—this is one of those. Exploring futuristic club environments with 10-tracks of innovative, aggressively leftfield dance music—Lee Gamble’s UIQ label introduces Safa and this highly invigorating LP Ibtihalat.
“Mhamad Safa is a musician, architect and researcher, based between London and Beirut. Safa’s work focuses on multi-scalar spatial conditions and their sonic make-ups. He explores their intersections with aural legacies of traditional and subcultural practices as well as environments of conflict and violence. He conveys these auditory inquiries by assembling sound design, micro-sampling, algorithmic sound technology, psychoacoustics, field recordings, and their graphic interpretations. Culminating with heavily percussive and rhythmically odd interventions, these sonic irregularities are often repurposed as speculative experimentations on the futures of dance culture.”
Opening with progressively enchanted rhythms in “Terminus Messaoud,” Safa flexes this percussive palette that is weighted in bass and granular soundscapes. For fans of Rian Treanor and Gabor Lazar will feel right at home, although Safa’s characteristics are a different take on elasticated figures and whilst may seem like a comfortable entry—this is only the beginning.
Suitably warmed up we dive head first into “Supranomadic” that demonstrates pure exuberance in dynamic yet precise programming. Varying drum patterns cut through big room atmospherics, often in a state of brute force there is no holding back Safa in this most pleasing onslaught, it is abrasive in tone whilst maintaining traits to keep your body moving.
As we continue to be led by Safa through these sonic negotiations, spatial development shows encouragement in “Liturgies For Cyborgs,” and “Bel Abbes,”—these tracks are bottled excitement that would make for thought-provoking engagement in a darkened room with a system to do it justice.
Venturing further into “Proto–Ismael,” we see Safa juxtapose traditional sounds into a eradicating saturation that feels like a rebirth cycle; regurgitated digital cacophony that may sound unpleasant in text form, in fact just goes to prove Safa’s fearlessness in creating unapologetic sequences that unnerve, but ultimately satisfy those that remain attune.
This is the half way point of Ibtihalat, but the end of my review. Save yourself the rest of the time to listen to this release in full, if my words of half this album are not enough to trigger a warrant for getting stuck in, then why write more.
One that will be doing the rounds and without doubt on multiple End Of Year lists! Available now via UIQ Bandcamp in digital with a physical release forthcoming 29th April.
Ibtihalat is available on UIQ. [Bandcamp]
