TootArd - Salma Sunshine (2026) [Hi-Res]

Salma Sunshine is a short, mostly instrumental six-piece set by TootArd, issued in 2026 on the Swiss independent label Carpet Ride Records. The release is in effect a re-positioning of material first published in May 2021 under the solo alias of Hasan Nakhleh — Hasan Kai — on the same label, with an identical tracklist and identical Arabic-to-English title pairings ("Raqsat al-Hisan" / "Dance of the Horse", "Asia al-Gharbia" / "Asia West", and so on). In 2026 the EP appears in streaming catalogues under the band's primary brand, TootArd, alongside the parallel Hob Bala Hudoud — EP, anchoring it firmly in the group's post-Migrant Birds phase.
Musically this is TootArd at their most cinematic and least song-oriented. After Laissez Passer (Glitterbeat, 2017), built on Tuareg-leaning desert blues and Arabic rock, and the synth-driven Migrant Birds (Glitterbeat, 2020), which paid homage to 1980s Levantine and Egyptian disco floors, Salma Sunshine turns in a third direction: short guitar-and-keyboard vignettes that draw on Mediterranean surf instrumentals, the "pharaonic" easy-listening of figures like Omar Khorshid, and the quarter-tone Arabic pop palette TootArd has been developing throughout their career. The titles point straight at the region's geography and iconography — "Asia al-Gharbia" (Western Asia), "Abu al-Hawl" (the Arabic name for the Great Sphinx of Giza), "Qandil al-Bahr" (jellyfish), "Dead Sea Tears" — extending the cartography that has defined the Nakhleh brothers' work: a Levant and its neighbours that exists across, rather than within, borders.
Conceptually the EP sits inside the same coordinates as the group's previous records. The members come from the village of Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, hold a laissez-passer and are officially "undefined" in terms of nationality; their music, by their own account and by the consensus of the press, treats borders as raw material rather than as restriction, mixing Arabic modes with reggae, psychedelic rock and the dance traditions of the Middle East. Salma Sunshine is a compact, mostly instrumental gateway into that universe — a useful introduction for listeners new to TootArd's sound.

Tracklist:
1-1 TootArd - Asia al-Gharbia [2:56]
1-2 TootArd - Raqsat al-Hisan [2:54]
1-3 TootArd - Salma Sunshine [2:36]
1-4 TootArd - Abu al-Hawl [3:26]
1-5 TootArd - Qandil al-Bahr [2:49]
1-6 TootArd - Dead Sea Tears [1:47]