Halalwood (2008)
10 tracks, 59 minutes
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Having spent portions of his life in Rabat (his hometown), New York and London, producer and DJ U-Cef absorbed the sounds of all three, and his music is a testament to the world-meeting potential of both Moroccan and club music.
Halalwood, U-Cef’s second album, is littered with guests, and every track is credited as ‘U-Cef feat.’ up to three musicians at a time, the only exception being ‘Ya Rayah’, his remix of the Rachid Taha recording. But it doesn’t sound cluttered as you might expect. U-Cef’s production binds it together so well that the first two tracks can be as different as a downtempo techno-trance take with darbuka and synths imitating oud and ney (with the help of Steve Hillage’s Mirror System) followed by hip-hop metal based around the deep roots Gnawa of Said Damir with Bizmatik on raps, and they flow together as smoothly as anything. The whole album goes along this way, with contributions from artists as diverse as Natacha Atlas, Damon Albarn, UK Apache and Dar Gnawa.
This is a great album to not think too closely about and instead let the music give your body an education on Moroccan music of all styles and club music of all flavours. When it works, it works and sometimes that’s all that it needs – Halalwood works through 15 guest musicians and one producer who knows each of the styles at play through first-hand connection to bring it all to the dancefloor as one united sound.
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