El Hal/The Feeling

El Hal/The Feeling is the first album in five years from the Anglo-Moroccan septet, led by the gimbri and voice of Simo Lagnawi, and produced by bassist Olly Keen in their South London studio. Gnawa lovers will rise up to salute the tribute here to the late maalem Mahmoud Guinea on the dubby, escalating earworm that is ‘Daimla’, while some pulsing motorik-meets-Gnawa dub opens the album with a flourish on ‘Tora Tora’, the band deftly moving from a driving synth bassline to voice and handclaps, electronics moving woozily through the background. ‘Cubaili Ba’ features a Juno synth lead line and Dave De Rose's drums set to a call-and-response vocal, while ‘Agia Hausa’ sets Lagnawi's gimbri against Senegalese mbalax-inspired rhythms and the hypnotic ‘Hindewu’ mixes in pipes.

Songs including ‘Fulan’ pay homage to the West African origins of Gnawa, while the tribute to Guinea, ‘Daimla’, proves to be a deep and funky delight, the highlight of a strong album that's exploratory while remaining well embedded in tradition. “Simo selected chants from the traditional song suites and, as a band, we extended these short pieces of ceremonial music and experimented with sound and structure,” says Olly Keen of their method, and it pays off handsomely.