Egram by Eyad
***Boomkat Product Review ****
Egyptian producer Eyad's debut album is one of the sickest no-fi deployments we've heard in a minute, weaving acidic shaabi melodies thru the blown-out wreckage of new beat, electro, EBM, trap, dungeon techno and queasy psy-trance, all produced on a cellphone. Properly clever, infectious and hard hitting gear, it comes hotly tipped if yr into early Autechre, Alan Wilder/Recoil-era Depeche Mode, Zomby’s Triton-heavy Eski gear, Muslimgauze pushed deep into the red, or Dopplereffekt’s Arpanet bullets. Fire, basically.
We don't know much about Eyad - he's 27, from Giza, not far from Cairo, and produced all the material here using FL on his phone. ‘Egram' is a split release between Heat Crimes and Egyptian imprint HIZZ and unfurls like a history lesson in electronic body music, haphazardly swerving from Coil-ish industrial woo to red-lining shaabi without ever letting go of its inherently mysterious synth vapours.
Opening track 'Rotary' is a bit of a red herring, the only track on the album to feature vocals, slowed down and growling synth-mangled rap re-shaped into a hoarse, downsampled wail and clanking percussion, each battling for sonic supremacy. After that, it goes into light-headed slowcore trance, Lego Feet-era Ae electro, slow and sensual Belgian drums, screwed ice-rink Eski and Arpanet’s retro-futurist lab-grown sci-fi - each with its own kinda baked swagger.
On 'Motamed', sharp outlines of shaabi cut thru Eyad's rust-stained industrial canvas, and on the title track he runs something like a rinsed folk rhythm against ’86-style emo synths. He’s at his best when he lets loose, filtering macerated breaks on the brief highlight 'Alnhaya Oryba', or zigzagging grotesque trance across booming thuds on the nightmarish 'Magzoba'. Then, on ‘Sharbon’, he sketches a microtonally tweezed electro jam that sounds like 'Tri Repetae' put thru a broken washing machine. Strange, and true.
