Sébastien Forrester pays homage to Gnawa music on the expansive psychedelia & rhythmic drone of ‘Spiral Line’

, 27 March 2020
sound

Sébastien Forrester is releasing EP Spirals via Paris’ KOWTOW Records on May 15, with preview track ‘Spiral Line’ premiering on AQNB today. This is the latest album from the Paris-based producer, whose frenetic electroacoustic atmospheres have enveloped their prior works.

This track slowly builds into an expansive drone of complex rhythmic timbres and folk music motifs. Psychedelic guitar melodies and vocal hums carve out headspace atop pummeling drum patterns reminiscent of James Holden‘s and Maalem Houssam Guinia’s 2016 EP Three Live Takes. Forrester explains how the work is inspired by Gnawa, a traditional style of music played in Morocco and parts of North Africa. Within the the trance-inducing FM synthesizer experimentations and relentless hypnotic rhythms, the artist pays tribute to a genre’s heritage and the legacy of rituals in the North African region. **

Sébastien Forrester’s Spirals is out via KOTOW Records on May 15.