FARHOT - Kabul Fire Vol. 2 (2021)

Brimming with fresh hip-hop ideas, rugged beats and featuring various guest MCs, Kabul Fire Vol 2. is Farhot's follow up to his 2013 debut album and is a rich tapestry of contemporary culture, bridging the forgotten cultural notes of Afghanistan with the street sounds of the west
Wiring together sampled Afghani documentaries, string orchestrations and tabla drums with key inputs from UK and German rappers like JuJu Rogers, Tiggs Da Author and Nneka, Farhot has made a body of work that amplifies his wide ranging immersion in hip hop culture and his traditional Afghan heritage. Kabul Fire Vol 2 is so much more than set of beats and samples, it's a tour of a creative mind dealing with the challenges faced as an Afghan living in a western culture in Hamburg, having fled Afghanistan with his family as a young boy in the early 80s, during the Afghan and Soviet war.
The recent history of Afghanistan is rich in twists and turns, tragedies, violence, but also filled with the hope of a better tomorrow. So whilst the record has various tracks sampling documentaries about recent wars, and even features the voice of Ahmad Shah Mahsoud (Yak Sher), a resistance fighter of the 1980s, Farhot remonstrates this is a positive record and that "sampling Afghani sounds is a way of bringing us all back together". With those samples baked into complex song arrangements, Farhot succeeds in creating a nuanced homage to Afghanistan that is full of surprises, breaches, and switches in pace and atmosphere.
Since his 2013 debut, Farhot has owned and run the Kabul Fire record label from his home in Germany. Whilst Kabul Fire Vol 1 "felt more like a beats and pieces album", despite some heavy collaborations with Ms Dynamite, Giggs and Kano, Kabul Fire Vol. 2 is much more. It's collage of Kabul but a Kabul in the heart of Farhot in 2021. It's his musical resistance, his personal tapestry to a country he loves but has no idea whether he will ever be reunited to.

Tracklist:
01. FARHOT - Bale Bale (00:34)
02. FARHOT - Kalun (01:46)
03. FARHOT - Yak Sher (03:25)
04. FARHOT - Check (02:52)
05. FARHOT - Kishmish (02:26)
06. FARHOT - Feel Ugly (05:08)
07. FARHOT - Azadi (02:14)
08. FARHOT - Pul (02:19)
09. FARHOT - Sampling Watana / Biya Bachem (02:15)
10. FARHOT - Arusi (03:17)
11. FARHOT - Ahange Qadimi (03:11)
12. FARHOT - Baqi Manda (02:18)
13. FARHOT - Shirin (00:35)