ABADIR - Mutate (2022)

Fresh outta Cairo, Abadir runs killlller arabic rhythms and sweltering electronics for Shanghai’s Svbkvlt - a surefire doozy for fans of DJ Plead, Livity Sound, DJ Haram, 3Phaz, Zuli

Packing drums and vibes for days, ‘Mutate’ delivers a personalised, hyperreal ambient dance perspective on the largest city in the Arab world, and its links to the global club rhizome. The album is Abadir’s 3rd solo LP after cutting teeth in the 0N4B duo with Onsy, and pays witness to his style coming into its own as a fierce blend of raucous, local percussion spliced with guttural dancehall, Jersey club, footwork-jungle and technoid hard drum dynamics. No mistake, it frigging slams on the ‘floor, but also contains more than enough devilish, textured detail and experimental character to keep headphone and home listeners locked in, too.

There’s a clear escalation of energies spiralling from the squashed dancehall banger ‘Bass belly’, thru the jungliest ballistics of the buckshot title tune and his incendiary curtain closer ‘Ya Nasim’. For peak time hard drum pressure, jump straight to ‘Pyrolysis’ with its pitching hand-drum samples and swarming choral motifs, or ‘Drifting Rituals’ for a bumping sort of Jersey variant, before ‘Blame it on Sutra’ dials up the drama with sweeping orchestral strings and the atmospheric ‘El 3ataba Interlude’ reveals his talent for evocative soundscaping. The 2nd half is where it turns the fuck up, ragging from jungle ballistics like the unruly sibling of the Horn Track on ‘Another One’, to a blistering footworker, ‘Irreversible’.