Crammed Discs offers two top global music releases in April

On April 1, Crammed Discs presents exciting new releases from two artists on top of the global music scene with DJ Dolores 1 Real and Think Of One Camping Shaâbi.

Using elements of popular music from his native Brazilian Northeast, blended with dancefloor-friendly electronics, horns, and rock & dub influences, BBC World Music Award winner DJ Dolores (aka Helder Aragão) has created 13 exhilarating songs that are contagiously joyful, yet based on the observation of a grim political and social subtext.

DJ Dolores found some of his inspiration for 1 Real in the music he heard in Brasília Teimosa, one of his hometown Recife's poor areas, on which his photographer friend Bárbara Wagner was doing a pictorial essay (now published in book form). The music is based on traditional rhythms, beefed up by electric guitars, drum machines and lo-fi computer programming. From forró to the music of the Jovem Guarda (the Young Guard of romantic Brasilian rock from the '60s), everything is incorporated into a format adapted to an audience which hopes to hear their life narrated and encapsulated in a song. The lyrical content goes from harsh social comment to personal, humorous notes on men/women relationships.

Lead by David Bovée, Think Of One's Camping Shaâbi integrates traditional Moroccan elements into the fabric of the band's characteristic sound & compositions, to create a strange, original and delightful musical object. The main impulse behind this album comes from Think Of One's immoderate love for Moroccan shaâbi, that popular style which is directly derived from traditional Berber music and from its irresistible rhythms. Shaâbi songs were originally (and still are) performed at parties and weddings, mostly in an urban environment. Many songs start off from the typical Berber 12/8 rhythm —the hallmark of Moroccan shaâbi –which sometimes becomes hardly recognizable as it is transmuted into some bizarre form of R'n'[Shaa]B[eat] (as in the title track), or into a quasi-punk cavalcade (in “Alela Minena”, based on a traditional counting rhyme). The album also includes tinges of abrasive rock (“Hamdushi Five,” based on a different North-African rhythm), of jazz (the always inventive horn arrangements), of electronica (with plenty of subtle sound treatments and deliciously vintage-sounding keyboards), of dub and Hip-Hop (“Oppressor”).

Let's not forget the lyrics: sometimes surreal and dream-like, but often connected to social issues which concern the band (racist stupidity, for instance, in the hilarious and politically explosive “Trap het af”). Other examples: the autobiography of an old car, recycled as a taxi (“J'étais Jetée”) or the uncanny “Mon Verre” and its evocation of certain dangers with which lonely female moviegoers can be confronted.

DJ Dolores 1 Real Think Of One Camping Shaâbi.
Tracks Tracks
1 “Deixa Falar” 1. “J'étais Jetée”
2 “Tocando o Terror” 2. “Mon Verre”
3 “Cala Cala” 3. “Wereld Ni”
4 “Proletariado” 4. “Oppressor”
5 “Wakaru” 5. “Gnawa Power”
6 “Shakespeare” 6. “Fantôme”
7 “J.P.S.” 7. “Hamdushi Five”
8 “Flying Horse” 8. “Mon verre revient”
9 “Numeros” 9. “Où tu vas?”
10 “Mutant Child (Run, Run, Run)” 10. “Trap het af” ”
11 “Saudade” 11. “Sharia Orabi”
12 “The Mind Inspector” 12. “Camping Shaabi”
13 “Blacksmoke In Brazil” 13. “Antwaar'pse Shaâbi”
14. “Alela Minena”