Super Parquet - Couteau / Haute Forme

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 181, October 2022.

Super Parquet
Couteau / Haute Forme
Airfono (66 mins)

Super Parquet command the confluence of Auvergnat folk, art and club music, creating their own unique soundflow. This follow-up to their 2019 debut is actually two complementary albums in one. The first part, Couteau, continues where they left off, with acoustic timbres of cabrette (bagpipes), boîte à bourdon (drone hurdy-gurdy) and banjo clashing with astringent electronics and effects, building up short ostinati into overwhelming textures with agonising dissonances and distortions, with traditional song cutting through here and there. It’s ever-evolving, ever-building and absolutely brilliant. It feels somewhat like a mirror-image of ambient music: its construction and impact are very similar, but its sound is anything but relaxing.

The relationship with ambient music gets much closer on Haute Forme. It takes the shape of a single 38-minute piece (split into two by the limitations of vinyl), starting with pumping, phasing cardiorhythms and screeching proto-melodies that eventually mellow into a wide-open soundscape. With another transformation, it becomes a bourrée macabre before this too dissolves into unstoppable, suffocating repetition until there is nothing but pulse and drone. Then silence.

For this double-album, the ideal listening experience is one of sensory overload and deprivation: play as loud as possible in a pitch-black environment. The constant looping can be brain-jamming. It fills the skull – Super Parquet’s music almost physically demands one’s full attention.

Rabii Harnoune & VB Kühl - Gnawa Electric Laune II

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 181, October 2022.

Rabii Harnoune & VB Kühl
Gnawa Electric Laune II
Tru Thoughts (58 mins)

As you might guess, this album is the sequel to the first collaboration between Moroccan Gnawa musician Harnoune and German producer Kühl, which came out in 2020. With two years to percolate their ideas, the approach seems to be ‘more of the same, but bigger’. Each of the 12 tracks has many layers of sound that give it a luscious atmosphere, like a jungle where different voices, synths, basses, beats, percussions, riffs and assorted beeps and bloops loom out from the denseness the closer you listen.

While Harnoune’s Gnawa roots usually provide some element of a baseline throughout with some combination of guimbri (bass lute), qaraqab (metal castanets) and singing, Kühl’s production builds from those foundations to take in all sorts of electronic dance influences. There’s a more jazzy edge this time around, whether it’s within the chilled lo-fi vibes of ‘Jilani’ or the get-up-and-dance remix-feel of ‘Aisha’. There are also calmer moments where Harnoune sings in a more classical Arabic style such as on ‘Gihaorba’, which provides a nice contrast.

As with the previous album, this project doesn’t come close to the intensity of the Gnawa lila ceremony, but it’s still plenty of fun for a light-hearted listen with a Moroccan flavour.