Photo: kafrawy

With just under a month to go until the release of her long-awaited new album Laini Tani, Nadah El Shazly has shared its powerful title track, along with a stunning accompanying video. Following on from the riveting and rousing first single ‘Ghorzetein‘, ‘Laini Tani’ blends freeform mawal-style vocal improvisation, Arabic scales, pulsing electronics and delicate harp. A disorienting and exhilarating listen, the track unfolds with both spontaneity and intent, constantly shifting its centre of gravity. The song, like much of the upcoming album, features harpist and experimental musician Sarah Pagé. Describing the track, Nadah shares:

“This song has a freeform mawal style beginning, where the words are about being in a relaxed, unbothered state and enjoying the moment. The beat comes in and breaks the mawal, and I start wondering what fate is bringing next. The melody switches to a more major scale when the beat disappears, asserting that if anyone wants to come visit, or enter my life, they should come back another time instead. And find me again later — maybe in a next life even! Musically it celebrates my close relationship with Sarah. We’ve been playing together since we met at Hotel2Tango recording studio in 2016 in Montreal, when I was recording my debut album, Ahwar. Sarah tunes her harp to Arabic scales, in this case, the Saba scale, and we can totally be in the same body and mind when we play together.”

Kafrawy directed the accompanying video. Watch it now.

Laina Tani is out on June 6th through One Little Independent Records, and Backward Music in Canada.

Eight years on from the release of Ahwar, Egyptian-born, Montreal-based composer, producer and vocalist Nadah El Shazly has announced its follow-up. Entitled Laina Tani, her upcoming album arrives on June 6th through her new label, One Little Independent Records, and Backward Music in Canada. Known for her sultry and soul-stirring vocal abilities, on the upcoming album Nadah weaves between classical Egyptian improvisation, voice manipulation and electronic beats. An album of contrasts, Laina Tani “captures not only the chaos and beauty of urban life but also the private battles and triumphs within it that define the human experience”, as the press release describes, “inviting the listener to lose themselves in its enchanting rhythms while deciphering the deeper truths woven into its fabric.”

Nadah enlisted her long-term collaborator Radwan Ghazi Moumneh to record the album and Sarah Pagé on harp and electronics, as well as 3Phaz as co-producer and Heba Kadry on mastering duties.

Album closer ‘Ghorzetein’, which means ‘Two Stitches’ and “explores the double wound of a heart that has loved and been broken twice”, is the first single to emerge. A riveting and rousing track, it comes with an accompanying video directed by Selim El Sadek. Watch it now.

There’s wonderful news from Egyptian composer, producer and vocalist Nadah El Shazly who is teasing a forthcoming album with a new single called ‘Bānit’. Haunting and bewitching, ‘Bānit’ conjures up emotions through her sensual and powerful voice. The track comes in the shape of a video performed live at Colors Studio. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more info but for now watch the video below.

Nadah El Shazly has unveiled a video to accompany ‘Mahmiya’, the stunning and moving closing track from her debut solo album Ahwar, released last year. Egyptian artist Marwan El-Gamal, who had previously worked on Nadah’s album artwork, returns to create this befitting psychedelic tale of strange beauty. He explains how he developed the concept for the video:

“The idea for the animation came after internalising the soundscape and words of Nadah El Shazly’s ‘Mahmiya’. It had a sensibility that seemed soothing and warm – vital and at peace, yet vast and unconcerned, like a sea, long since dried and fossilised, wherein the listener is placed without bearings. This brought about a story, a character and landscape where time and location are not classified.

In this place there is a condition of symmetry between the inner world of the girl and the outer landscape. She morphs and changes through her surroundings, and through these interactions the world is animated and energised. The land evolves and vegetates and soars and crumbles. Things occur as they will, and force is not exerted, but rather the events unfold without effort.

Time becomes represented as fluctuating and dilating, and our girl breathes, plays, creates, grows, and becomes conclusively unrecognisable, then to be brought back to the beginning of a cycle.

There seems to be an indefiniteness to the events, and change is constant, and she plays her part with no concern to consequence. The girl may be an extension of the land, a force of creation, a mechanical machine, or a little girl vulnerable to this ambiguous place full of unfamiliar entities. Through this ambiguity I hope to provide a visual counterpart to Nadah El Shazly’s touching song.”

Watch the video for ‘Mahmiya’ below.

Ahwar is out now via Nawa Recordings.