Laylet el Booree

For their second album, Ifriqiyya Electrique have refined their approach; an improved production lends greater power to a concept that demands well-delineated sonic crunching. Three intense Tunisian singers evoke the ritual Banga ceremony from the country's southern Djerid desert, complete with Gnawa-style metallic percussion, while the French-Italian pair previously known as Putan Club provide an alluringly uncomfortable bed of bass, drums, guitar and electronics. Fatma Chebbi, a new member, now provides a female tonality within the vocal spread.

This album's tracks have the feel of an extended suite-like work, ebbing and flowing with degrees of quiet traditionalism and ramming pile-ups of aural distress, with the bombastic bulk tending towards the latter. It's an exhilarating experience, best heard through speakers that boast a punching weight. Thoughts of Swans and Einstürzende Neubauten jolt forward, but the images of hardcore goat-bloodletting ceremonies are also strikingly limned. The album's mix doesn't sacrifice any sonic ingredient; the equal pile-up intensifies the excitement. It's a glum-rock invocation of a glam-rock stomp. There are recurring ascents to manic excess, but then the next track will cut back to an acoustic interlude, with flute, voices and percussion, until a bass thrum builds and the drums loom larger, a piano sometimes provides angular scatters, and the heaviness is regrouped. The translated album title is ‘Night of the Madness,’ of course…