What: “Orient Illusion” by Dub Machine
Netlabel: Fresh Poulp Records
Dub Machine is actually one man – Tunisian Ilyess Mahfoudhi. Based on the musical evidence he presents here, it sounds like a night in Tunisia might be filled with dub and dubstep.
This five-track record is all built around electronic based instrumentation. It’s full of fantastic sounds and each song here has its own definite personality. Opening track “Darwish” starts with a slower dub groove and a spoken word sample (possibly of poet Mahmoud Darwish?) but then explodes about a minute in. The track “Ragragui” samples what sounds like a call to prayer, but the human voice gets twisted into something more recognizable as an electronic beat at times. And for something different, final track “Orient Illusion” equally mixes dub with some Asian musical influences.
Fresh Poulp Records is a netlabel featuring various styles of electronic music. The site says: “Sailing through dub, techno, electronica and drum’n’bass, the poulp’s tentacles also lead to other musical style fiting with the electronic domain and all its crossovers (hip-hop, jazz, oriental music).” The label has been around for ten years, and you can see the evidence of that on their releases page.
And for the record, I love their badass logo:
