- Like Acid Arab and Disco Halal, Acid Hamam's dance floor is a space for cultural exchanges. Acid Arab's Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho have said of their position in the Eastern dance music tradition: "We just want to be part of it, and contribute to this brilliant and enormous masterpiece that this music is, and has been for thousands of years." They're fans first and foremost, and when listening to Soul Sirocco, Acid Hamam's debut EP for Swedish label Tom Tom Disco, it seems to come from the same place.
The spread of influences makes the music here sound open-ended and displaced. Soul Sirocco is named after a Mediterranean wind; "Vallmusik" refers to traditional Scandinavian sheepherding music; other titles hint at Asian and Indian cultures, all of which is echoed in Acid Hamam's tracks. Take the Richard Rossa collaboration "Shaman Disco," which matches retrograde grooves and nu-disco funk with an ambiguous Eastern vocal and splashes of jazz. "Vallmusik" begins in a druggy tech house zone, before taking on tinder-dry drums and a taste of the Orient. Then, halfway through, gloomy synths appear to add a Western tint.
Soul Sirocco's best moments come from the delightful twists and turns in its long machine jams. The unexpected sludgy acid break in "Ceylons Öland," and the way "Soul Sikher" mutates through light and dark anomalies, make the EP worth savouring.
Tracklist01. Ceylons Öland
02. Vallmusik
03. Soul Sikher
04. Shaman Disco feat. Richard Rossa