Send "Rachid Taha " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Back before Rachid Taha was a solo performer, and before he started his first band, Carte de Séjour, he was already figuring out ways to reconcile the popular music of the Western and Arab worlds while spinning records in a club he founded. He'd get a beat from Led Zeppelin or Kraftwerk going, then mash it up with Oum Kalthoum or a recording by some other Arabic or North African performer. And he was doing this in the 1970s, at a time when the mash-up was a distant-future pop cultural phenomenon and Grandmaster Flash was only beginning to map out his adventures on the wheels of steel. In a sense, Taha has never stopped making those mash-ups in a career that now spans almost 20 studio albums between Carte de Séjour and his solo career. He's got rock, reggae, techno, raï, and Arab pop wrapped so tightly together on his records that they're nearly inseparable. All the mixing makes sense, given his background as an Algerian by birth who has lived in France since the age of 10.If there's one thing all his music has in common, it's that it moves, whether the beat is pushed along by North African percussion, a drum machine, a drum kit, or some combination of the three. The material on Bonjour is still kinetic, but the grooves are different, more locked in, and persistently downtempo. That might partly be a side effect of Taha's break with longtime producer Steve Hillage in favor of Gaëtan Roussel, the leader of popular French folk-rock band Louise Attaque. The bounce that Hillage gave Taha's albums has been replaced by tense, tightly coiled beats, and the various styles that Taha draws upon to inform his own are even more thoroughly smeared together. "Mokhtar" is basically synth pop with Taha singing in Arabic over the top as little Berber flourishes and swathes of distorted guitar gnaw at the edges. "Sélu" is the biggest exception to the generally slower tempos, but it sticks with the album's overall technique of building off of hypnotic, repetitive rhythms. "Ha Baby" has a fluid rhythmic underpinning, but it's more traditionally Arabic, the beat covered with flecks of oud and mandolute....full text |
| Bbc |
| It’s a cliché, but often the case, that some artists lose their edge when at their happiest. For nearly three decades – first with the band Carte de Séjour, and since 1991, as a solo artist – the French-Algerian rocker Rachid Taha has been making music with an edgy, sometimes angry subtext. This record is different. Bonjour is something of a step into the unknown for Taha. After a lengthy and successful partnership with producer Steve Hillage, he’s chosen to work instead with Gaëtan Roussel, the man behind a string of Francophone pop hits for the likes of Vanessa Paradis and M. After recording demos in Paris, work continued with producer Mark Plati in New York. The results are being touted as Taha’s ‘American’ album, but aside from the vaguely alt-country feel of the title track, with its galloping snare, you may not realise. The relaxed, loved-up tone of Je T’Aime Mon Amour, and the sound of a baby crying at the end of the innocuous Mabrouk Aalik seem to hint at a blissful domestic situation, but it would be wrong to speculate on the singer’s personal life. The main problem with Bonjour is that it’s the slightest and blandest album he’s made since Olé Olé in 1995. Much of Taha’s appeal lies in his gutteral scowl, but this is too often obscured by backing vocals, or crowded by the arrangements....full text |
| Guardian |
| Rachid Taha has calmed down. Best known for his furious Arabic and rock fusions, and that rousing tribute to his hero Joe Strummer on Rock El Casbah, he has broken off his musical partnership with Steve Hillage and travelled to New York to record with a new producer, Gaetan Roussel, the current golden boy of French pop. The result is an unlikely set in which Taha appears to be deliberately courting a new, wider market by playing down that wild rebel image. (He even looks like a cabaret singer on the CD, in his fancy shirt.) That said, there are no songs entirely in English; he switches between Arabic and French in this mix of pleasant ballads and novelty pop, with just the occasional reminder of the old passion and anger. The album starts with electronic bleeps and a rolling, easy-going love song, Je t'Aime Mon Amour, which could almost have been written by Amadou and Mariam. It's followed by a batch of tuneful, singalong tracks with a gently Arabic edge, plus a couple of more rousing songs, Mokhtar and Selu, to redress the balance. A highly commercial set, perhaps, but not his most exciting....full text |
Rachid Taha lyrics
|
| ||||||||||
