My Heart is Dust Before Him: 21st Century Gasba from Algeria

On a backstreet in central Oran there is a store with a yellow sign reading Edition Ahlem and a scrolling LED banner that says you are welcome. Abdelkader Haci has run the label out of it since 1992, writing and composing for his own artists as well as releasing them, while the rest of the Algerian industry chased pop rai. Hive Mind's Marc Teare worked through three decades of that catalog and pulled ten tracks. Gasba takes its name from the Berber reed flute, older than the country; here it cuts through drum machines and Auto-Tune laid on thick enough to make the vocals sound synthetic. Oueld Melal plays across most of it. Vinyl only, and the flute wins every argument on the record.