Paris-based collective Al-Qasar features members hailing from France, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and the United States. The Middle Eastern psych-rock collective are releasing their debut album, ‘Who Are We?’ on 16 September 2022, via Glitterbeat Records and make their UK debut show at WOMAD Charlton Park on Sun 31 July.
“Al-Qasar was born in the Barbès neighbourhood of Paris,” explains French-US band leader Thomas Attar Bellier. “I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Paris, New York, Lisbon… I wanted to start a project that was in tune with the daily life of people living in these international cities, something diverse, radically colourful, with a fresh, contemporary outlook on what societies really look like today.” Uniting Turkish saz, fuzz guitars, Arab oud, darbuka, vintage amps and classic drum sounds, the resulting sound lives up to that promise with what the band call “Arabian fuzz’.
The lyrics are in Arabic, delivering an incisive yet poetic attack on political oppression and raising themes often seen as taboo in Middle Eastern music. But the mood is exhilarating, echoing the atmosphere of the band’s live gigs, like an Arab wedding, turned into a psychedelic celebration on the dancefloor. Attar Bellier’s hard-hitting production is augmented by the mixing ingenuity of Alain Johannes (PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys, Queens Of The Stone Age). Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Sudanese singer-songwriter Alsarah, and Egyptian vocalist Hend Elrawy (Orange Blossom) also contribute to this smashing debut.
“Awal” is the first single from the album. Attar Bellier: “With more than a few Berber members in the Al-Qasar collective, the time was ripe for a song with bendirs and awtar, a subtle nod to our hero Mohamed Rouicha. I wanted to juxtapose this Atlas Mountains vibe with fuzzed out psychedelic guitars. This is where Lee Ranaldo came in. Lee recorded a dozen drone guitar tracks using his signature tricks (bowed strings, crazy feedbacks, drum sticks) – solo’d together, they worked as a piece of art in itself, it was unreal. The lyrics are in Arabic, but the title “Awal” is actually from Tamazight and means “words”. These “words” are the ones uttered by corrupt politicians, who have no backbone and whose contempt for their constituents have sunk entire generations into poverty and disillusionment.”
Ryley Fogg, who directed the “Awal” music video, wanted to make a “kaleidoscopic poem set against the track’s dark lyrical themes of false promise and political corruption”. The video, Fogg explains, “conjures a psychedelic journey through the desert terrain of a sci-fi dreamscape, in a refiguring of mythologies of metamorphosis and transformation.”
Pre-order on Bandcamp: https://alqasar.bandcamp.com/album/who-are-we
The band play their UK debut show at WOMAD Charlton Park on Sun 31 July