Little Hammam

When Songlines reviewed Ouesh Hada?, the 2013 debut album from Temenik Electric, we suggested it would be thrilling to hear them team up with Justin Adams. Someone must have been reading because two years later Adams produced Inch’Allah Baby, the vibrant follow-up from the Marseille-based French-Algerian collective led by singer and main songwriter Mehdi Haddjeri.

There’s no Adams this time and the album has been produced in-house at the Denger studio in Marseilles, and although there’s nothing quite as slamming as the heaviest rock elements of Inch’Allah Baby, the band’s third album is another winner. The opening track ‘M’Cha O Jet’ sets the tone with a minimalist Maghreb melody that gives way to an ominous string riff not dissimilar to Led Zep’s ‘Kashmir’ on top of which there’s some acoustic folk guitar finger-picking in the style of Bert Jansch. Fusion doesn’t get much more fused. ‘Redoua Grib’ is meatier this time, electric guitar combining with the Arabic strings and a punk-like chorus of which the late Rachid Taha would have been proud. ‘Manich Maleik’ opens with a muezzin’s call and some scratchy oud before it gives way to a chaabi pop chorus. Elsewhere trad Gnawa rhythms mix thrillingly with contemporary electro grooves. Rock’n’rai, indeed.