NAGAH MAHDI - OPUSCRITS EN 48 ROULEAUX

Their music: what a blend! From metal, to jazz, opera, contemporary music, progressive rock, electronic, ambient, classic, gypsy, egyptian, african percussions, tap dance, ska, circus music, fusion, zeuhl... , Sebkha Chott mix so many styles with a perfect mastery of structured-craziness. On Nagah Mahdi, we can hear some Zappa, Magma, Fishbone, and Mr.Bungle influences. Call their music whatever you want to: "eclectic cosmic music", "auditory feast", or "Mekanik Metal Disco" (as the band says himself), but it is evident that they're awesome! Nagah Mahdi is really innovator; I felt over backward!

While you're listening to the album, you can imagine that you're in a musical theater. You penetrate their world named Ohreland. The atmosphere is festive, ironic, strange, loud, heavy, dramatic, oriental... but they particularly accent the delirious and original side of their songs. The brass instruments and the distortion guitars leads the sound, despite that their music is so diversified and the amount of intruments is really big. The 3 singers (2 men and 1 woman) contribute to create a crazy atmosphere, alternating between talked lyrics, cries, whispering, opera and going from French to English... Their lyrics are totally profound and lucid. The texts bring some strong reflections about life, even if it seems to have irony in them. The words are manipulated with a hand of genius!

Their album Nagah Mahdi is really surprising. You've propably never seen that: 48 tracks on one CD! All the tracks are really short; about 1:30 (one is 5 seconds long!!!), but there's a black sheep (a 12:50 long track). The 48 tracks of Nagah Mahdi are separated in 8 rouleaux (rolls). However, almost all the songs follow one after the other and cannot be separated. The musical pieces form a masterpiece that has to be considered as a whole, as a brilliant album in his entirety.

If you're adventurous, don't wait to get it, it's absolutely worthwhile! I give 4.5 stars for this jewel!