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Hot on the heels of their last EP “Eurabia, Vol. 2,” Cairo Liberation Front is back with the third and final volume of their Eurabia trilogy. “Eurabia, Vol. 3” introduces a unique collaborative approach to contemporary Middle Eastern dance music with a new batch of recordings originating in a series of studio experiments with a greater emphasis on live instrumental composition. The lead single ‘Esrar’.
Cairo Liberation Front (CLF) was started by Yannick Verhoeven and Joep Schmitz, two geeky and somewhat naïve Dutch devotees of Egyptian electro-cha3bi. The discovery of this highly infectious music (originating in the streets of Cairo) prompted the duo to begin collecting tracks and creating mixtapes to help try and promote electro-cha3bi to the rest of the world. These mixtapes rapidly gained recognition from international media platforms such as the New York Times and the Guardian but, as it would turn out, their love for electro-cha3bi was just the root of their own musical journey. The duo soon became inspired to compose and create their own music, an undertaking first heard on “Nymphaea Caerulea” (Höga Nord Rekords 2017), a collaborative album with renowned US-based psych producer Al Lover. Outside of the confines of the studio their live show caught on quickly as well, with electrifying sets at popular European festivals such as Amsterdam Dance Event, Best Kept Secret, Dour, Fusion and Pukkelpop.
Over the course of their first two records “Eurabia, Vol. 1” (2018) and “Eurabia, Vol. 2” (2019), Cairo Liberation Front refined their musical style, collaborating with Syrian keyboard legend Rizan Said and Moroccan-Belgian bass producer Jabo. Along the way the duo became a trio with the addition of vocalist Bagdaddy. This fiery punk was born in Iraqi, but had never sang in her native language before meeting Verhoeven and Schmitz. Her own attitude connected so well with the values and beliefs of the collective’s DIY ethos that joining CLF as a full-time member felt obvious. Becoming a three-piece has led to an exciting new chapter for the group.
For “Eurabia, Vol. 3” the band decided to try their hand at incorporating a greater degree of non-electronic sounds and percussion into the writing process. In the studio they received help from multi-instrumentalist N.R. Safi, best known as the lead singer of the Arizona-based drone rock band The Myrrors as well as for Naujawanan Baidar, his solo Afghan folk/noise project. His input can be heard on several tracks, but perhaps most prominently on the instrumental ‘Asban’. Bagdaddy leads the charge on opening track “La-a” and lead single “Esrar,” while “Milli” folds in the group’s experiments with funk percussion and space rock. This last volume of the Eurabia series is built in equal parts of collaboration and friendship, exploring the endless possibilities to be found in bridging disparate worlds and dovetailing everything with open-minded but finely-honed production.
https://soundcloud.com/cairo-labelration-front/esrar/s-mRLMdhMiVfc?in=cairo-labelration-front/sets/eurabia-vol3//s-1S97kWSWcSs
