The Source

Since former Rolling Stone Brian Jones first recorded them in 1968, the sound of the musicians of Jajouka in Morocco's Rif mountains has not changed. But then why should it? They are after all ‘a 4,000 year old rock band,’ as the writer William Burroughs famously described them. Recorded in the home of Bachir Attar, leader of the group since 1982, this album illustrates exactly why their narcotically hypnotic sound appealed so much to Burroughs and his junkie friends. The three longest tracks on The Source, all around the 15-minute mark, establish an ecstatic trance-like magic, which in real-time appears to be based on endless repetition – until you try fast-forwarding the music and you realise that the endlessly looping patterns and motifs actually undergo a series of imperceptible but quite radical modulations. Underpinned by bendir and darbuka drums, Attar and his 11-strong troupe weave compelling and sometimes oddly dissonant melodies on gimbris, gaitas (oboes), wooden flutes and kamanja (violins). What is most striking is how modern these ancient rhythms can sound. Tracks such as ‘Hanging Out in Jajouka’ and ‘Dancing in Your Body and Head’ (titles surely dreamed up not in the Rif mountains but by the record company's marketing department) resemble an organic take on the kind of electro-trance music heard in the clubs of Hoxton and elsewhere. It's music that requires a certain setting and concentration to appreciate fully its ritual power and Burroughs probably got it about right when he wrote of the need to ‘listen with your entire body’. Only then, he sagely noted, will you mystically link yourself to the most ancient music on earth.