Imdukal'N' El Hussain Safir
Toutlayt Inou ⵜⵓⵜⵍⴰⵢⵜ ⵉⵏⵓ

Hurray for the Riff Raff's latest album The Navigator is the follow up to the landmark 2014 release Small Town Heroes on ATO Records. It's a concept album largely about gentrification and its protagonist's navigation of "her gender identity, her sexual identity, class, and race and culture and everything" as her community begins to disappear. Like a song-cycle from an imaginary Off-Broadway musical, The Navigator rises from the ashes of loneliness and striving, honky tonks and long walks by the river of urban dreams. From the wistful melancholy of Life to Save, to the stubborn resignation of Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl, Segarra’s voice speaks with a husky weariness that coexists with a naïve curiosity. It’s the voice of a rebel who wanted everyone to think she was so tough, and nobody could take her down, but at the same time was yearning for love and magic, some kind of an awakening. With its 12 tracks and its Travelers, Sages, and Sirens, The Navigator comes straight at you from the intersection of apocalypse and hope. This album rides Patti Smith’s high horse while straddling Chrissie Hynde’s thin line between love and hate.

Raï is the music of a youth hungover from Algeria's recent independence. It became a space for a liberated, transgressive dialogue that told the social truths of its time -- an up-front yet poetic voice that covers the taboos and frustrations of daily life, expressing emotion without detour. This voice is heard at weddings, cabarets, in the nightclubs of the Oranese coast, and casually on the street... With the boom of the audio cassette, an avalanche of raï tapes were produced in Oran and diffused all over the world. Both women and men sang and listened to the new sound, as raï is intimately tied to parties, alcohol and the night. With the spontaneous improvisation of its singers as the main part of each song, raï keeps reinventing itself. In this style, Cheb Hasni, along with Cheb Nasro, incarnates a second generation of musicians. With the "love raï", or sentimental raï, Hasni sings about love, passion and its setbacks -- moving away from the bittersweet daily chronicles of the first chebs and chebates. Having recorded nearly 150 cassettes, Cheb Hasni remains one of the most prolific and talented raï singers of his generation. Almost thirty years after his death, this three-volume compilation of rare tracks from his cassette releases on the Oriental Music Production label is a tribute to the lasting legacy of Cheb Hasni -- ya raï! The second volume of three is presented here.CHEB HASNIVol 2Outre National

November 2016, 10 years of OTPMD. Vincent Bertholet, still resolute, finally realises his old dream of a'real' orchestra. And thus was born the project to expand the known horizon. The orchestra became XXL by assembling accomplices from the first hour, who had never really disappeared from view, and an English string section met along the way.From now on, they will be 14 on stage. An anniversary tour, prestigious stages and makeshift squats, unrestrained agitation as in the first days, and a larger chorus, more percussive than ever. The multi-headed Hydra gives voice in concert and the frail stages that host it groan under its weight. Nevertheless, it is in the studio that the foundation of a new adventure is forged. Back to England, in the imposing and magnificent building that houses Real World Studios. After Rotorotor (2014), John Parish is again at the controls.It's called Sauvage Formes, a shrewd title, because everything here is as geometric as it is organic. The incisive rhythms, doubled in XXL, trademark of the pack, mingle with the unusually melancholy brass. The guitar riffs express themselves in minimalistic cascades, and since the number of strings has tripled, they allow themselves the luxury of entwining with each other, like a carnal embrace without epilogue. The voices, more numerous than usual, recite, chant, lead the dance and poeticise, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and, in the same spirit, the chorus takes the opportunity to shape the pediment of hymns to elsewhere.These 8 songs as beautiful as they are adventurous, it seems to be a story of a voyage, a torn logbook. On the horizon however, neither boat, nor rickety plane, neither map nor compass. Is it because the continent that is mentioned in these texts and melodies is not a known place, but rather a dream world, a land of asylum for rebels and the insubordinate, for the daring and the benevolent