Swaken

In the few years between the release of their 2020 debut album Nayda! and Swaken, this hotly anticipated follow-up, Bab L’ Bluz have become bona fide rock stars, thanks to an almost constant whirl of festival appearances and the sheer talent and charisma of the duo that is awisha-wielding Moroccan frontwoman Yousra Mansour and French electric gimbri-player/multi-instrumentalist Brice Bottin. Even more psychedelic and hard rocking than its predecessor, Swaken (a word loosely translated as the altered state between cognition and trance) draws as much from psychedelic blues, funk and AC/DC-style rock as it does from the propulsive rhythms of Northern Africa’s Maghreb: Gnawa, Amazigh, chaabi, Hassani and Houara music. Interaction between instruments including guitars, mandole, ribab and gimbris, all electrified, between qaraqab castanets and, intriguingly, flutes, including the peul flute of Guinea Conakry, is bolstered by warm analogue production and deftly applied effects courtesy of Bottin and Real World Records’ Katie May; Mansour’s voice – melismatic, wide-ranging, take-no-prisoners powerful – feels like a call to arms, or at the very least, a call to hair-swirl and head-bang. Losing yourself to find yourself is the main theme here, evident on tracks such as the rollicking, Tamazight-language ‘Imazighen’, a celebration of ethnic diversity, and ‘AmmA’, a feminist anthem whose warrior vibe lingers. Marvellous.