Egyptian producer ABADIR cooks up Arabic rhythms with contemporary club genres in ‘Mutate’

Egyptian music producer and sound engineer ABADIR has released his latest album titled ‘Mutate’ via Shanghai-based experimental label SVBKVLT, which also happens to be the label’s 50th drop.

ABADIR started experimenting with the idea of mixing loops of Maqsoum — a traditional Egyptian rhythmic folk genre — at high bpm with Jungle tracks in one of his DJ sets, and apparently the two complemented one another. Further opportunity of this experimentation then arose when Athenian DJ/producer Ice_Eyes asked him to remix the track ‘Maps of Despair’, resulting in three-and-a-half minutes of brutally beautiful breaks.

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For this release, the Cairo-based producer collected various Arabic rhythms and blends them with contemporary club genres like jungle, footwork and more.

“I set out to make an album using the same technique with some of my favorite club genres. My aim was to mutate those genres, collecting different types of Arabic rhythms and cooking them with Jungle, Jersey Club, Reggaeton, Footwork, etc. It’s an irreversible equation, like a chemical reaction, where the output is a melted piece that cannot be broken down into its separate inputs. Instead of ‘deconstructing’ or generally looking beyond club music, I made some fatty, straight-up dance floor music,” explains ABADIR.

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The album will be performed live at Kraków’s Unsound Festival in October, where ABADIR will be joined on stage with percussionist Hogir Göregen.

Delve ABADIR ‘Mutate’ and its break-heavy tracks here, and follow the producer on Instagram for more updates on his rhythmic resonances.

Adrianna Cheung is Mixmag Asia’s Culture Curator, follow her on Instagram.