Alsarah

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Alsarah and the Nubatones

Wonderwheel Recordings drop a delicious EP of deep house with a global flavour as Sudanese singer Alsarah presents her latest album for the label.

It was our recent mixtape by Pystol Pete that turned us onto the name Alsarah, after he sequenced a tasty morsel from her recent collaboration with French beatsmith Débruit into the sea of exotic melodies that flowed eastwards. The track in question (‘Khartoum’), a synth-laden Middle Eastern beat symphony, was one of many fruits born from a full album project (‘Aljawal’) completed by the pair late last year and picked up by Soundway Recordings for general release. Highly acclaimed in many corners, the LP was subsequently selected in NPR’s Favorite World Music Albums for 2013 while The Guardian went as far to call Alsarah the “New Star of Nubian Pop”.

Building on this momentum, the Sudanese born, now Brooklyn based vocalist is, alongside her band The Nubatones, readying the release of her next album ‘Silt’, which drops March 11th on the ever-reliable, outernational label Wonderwheel Recordings. Best described as a melange of vintage Sudanese pop and other traditional East African sounds, the album promises to be an enticing listen if first single ‘Soukura (It’s Late)‘ is anything to go by, and this week you can pick up an EP that includes the original song as well as a number of remixes of forthcoming album tracks via the usual digital channels and vinyl 12 inch.

The remix package is certainly a strong one with some of the LP’soriginals respectively twisted into new formations by renowned producers Boddhi Satva, Nickodemus and Zeb from The Spy From Cairo. For us it’s the more electronic reworks that are the ones for the hard drive (or box), with Satva turning out an excellently deep Afro house workout, the Ancestral Soul head raising the tempo a little and injecting the song with just the right amount of stuttering electronic wizardry to make this super effective for the dancefloor. Label head Nickodemus meanwhile opts for the more relaxed ‘Rennat’ and plunges it into deeper four to the floor territory, amping up the hypnotic nature of the original song by slowly looping snatches of the melody and vocal over a pulsating electronic beat.

You can stream all six tracks below and if you wish visit Bandcamp to grab the full EP or Juno for the selection of tracks on wax. We hope to be playing them for months to come.