Hence the idea of creating something new, in which the intense and sharp sounds of techno and house met with the melodies, harmonies and songs of the Arab world. After the first experiments, they shared their findings with producers and musicians, inviting them to take part in the project. So the first single and the next compilation album, Acid Arab Collections came out, which includes collaborations with Crackboy, Pilooski, Etienne Jaumet and I:Cube.
Acid Arab have thus created a new form of world music, appropriating the codes of Middle Eastern music and transforming them with the typical analog instruments of techno, such as the beatbox and the bassline machine.
Acid Arab, who live expanded into a trio with the addition of keyboardist Kenzy Bourras, have managed to create a solid link between two apparently distant worlds such as club culture and Arab music, that is, the area between North Africa and the Middle East, to the remote territories of the Horn of Africa. Their live performances are welcomed with great enthusiasm by the public of the main European festivals. From Sonar to Melt, from Reeperbahn to Pitchfork, where they triumph.
In October 2016, they released their first album, titled Musique de France, on the Belgian label Crammed Discs. Among the participants were Rizan Said, Omar Souleyman’s Syrian keyboardist, the Algerian singer Rachid Taha and the musician and composer Aphex Twin.
“Talking about mixing means that there is a division, a binary vision of the Western and Eastern worlds. We don’t glue oriental sounds on western rhythms, we want to embody both cultures without pretending to reinvent oriental music or cheating ourselves by believing to create the eastern version of dance music. We just want to be a part of it, and contribute to this amazing and incredible masterpiece that music has been for hundreds of years and that it still is. This is not fusion. This is not mixing. This is a meeting point.”.
The result is one of the most exciting fusions of world electronic music that can be heard today: modern, intoxicating and strongly evocative.