Dijit - Wisswass (2024)

Cairo's Dijit has always been good, but on 'Wisswass' he augments his shadowed trip-hop reconstructions with his own words for the first time, delivering a hoarse, Tricky-like snarl. Featuring levitational collaborations with Lella and Sarah Shedid, it's a must-hear for anyone who's as hooked on 'Pre-Millennium Tension' and 'Like Weather' as we are - or even fans of latter-day outsiders like Coby Sey or Tirzah.

On his last couple of records for Manchester's YOUTH, Hashem L Kelesh, better known as Dijit, layed out his own idiosyncratic reading of trip-hop, fusing the genre's pebbly, slow-mo breaks with nods to electro-chaabi, AFX-style electronics and dizzy illbient experiments. He embraces the genre's mutability further on his Accidental Meetings debut, rapping in Arabic for the first time and formulating a new signature in the process. Like its predecessors, 'Wisswass' is still nostalgic - just check the Death in Vegas-style grind of 'Sarkh' - but Kalesh is careful to muddle his reverence with ingenious original touches, setting a new benchmark for the current wave of trip-hop revivalists in the process. 'Shitan' is a particular highlight, a grimy, half-speed trap production from cult French beatmaker Brodinski that spotlights Kalesh's rasp as he flows freely between gurgly 'Eraserhead' textures and trunk-rattling thumps.

Lella shows up with a vocal on 'Layali El Shouk', singing over Dijit's saturated drones and piano stabs before the track evolves into a glacial, dub-folk crawl, while 'Do Ko' is a twitchy, dissociated hypnagogic dancehall fantasy, led by wobbly Raymond Scott electronics and Kalesh's own smoke-stripped words, and on 'Kartona', M. Adel and Ahmeddine show up to help Dijit bend stadium rock riffs (really) around pacy live drum snippets and bit-crunched bass thuds.

Vocalist Nara lends her casually sweet tones to stand-out cut 'Bahr', a slowly-simmering mix of glassy FM electronics, instrumental vamps and hushed breaks. But the biggest curve-ball is the final track, 'Kharab', a quirky schoolyard singalong featuring Sara Shedid that concludes 'Wisswass' in typically confounding style, with juvenile synth squelches dancing around hard-as-nails beats. Bold and effortlessly eclectic, the album assertively cements Dijit's status as one of the era's primary trip-hop operatives. Excellent.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Dijit - Khazna - ١- خزنة (1:53)
1.02 - Dijit - Layali El Shouk - ٢- ليالي الشوق (3:47)
1.03 - Dijit - Do Ko - どこ - ٣ (2:53)
1.04 - Dijit - Kartona - ٤ - كرتونة (3:07)
1.05 - Dijit - Tub - ٥- طَبّ (2:30)
1.06 - Dijit - Bahr - ٦- بحر (2:37)
1.07 - Dijit - Sarkh - ٧- صَرخ (4:17)
1.08 - Dijit - Shitan - ٨- شيطان (1:47)
1.09 - Dijit - Kharab - ٩- خراب (3:22)