The Breakdown
Genevan label Bongo Joe has been sneaking out singles by Swiss/Moroccan electronic artist Sami Galbi since March last year but now the teasing is over. The full whammy, his debut album ‘Ylh Bye Bye’ has landed on the shelves and should soon be flying off them at speed, it’s that strong.
Galbi really is a Bongo Joe kind of artist, steeped in the Lausanne squat scene, art collective spirit and an agit-punk sensibility. He also makes fierce pop with a dance edge, fired by fusion which moulds his Moroccan traditions with an electro dynamic and some sprightly experimentation. Yes ‘Ylh Bye Bye’ jumps with a live-wire energy, an album which thrives in the up-tempo zone but still remains packed with twists and turns. Galbi has plenty to say here, although the set doesn’t ramble. Instead, it sustains a sophisticated focus, almost a fine polish, that’s surprising from someone who made the shift to electronic music just three years ago.
Take the bubbling L’mjmr which glistens confidently in an autotuned, broken beat shake down, complete with rai fanfares and drum machined action. It’s like Manal sheen meets some Omar Souleyman velocity. L’Azri in comparison feels more sultry and spacious, all jangly pop chorus and curling guitar-toned synth lines with an undertow which shifts between trap and a subtle reggaeton skank. These two tracks alone hint at the sonic range this new artist is developing.
Galbi’s songs also have a directness and integrity about them, they go further than dance floor fillers and explore his everyday as an immigrant in Europe and beyond. On the brooding dubstep of Valisa, which translates as ‘Suitcase’, he raps and sings about a life of constant movement and packing up ‘ruins in our backpack until we find our house’. Transit is similarly forthright, hung with hip-hop gravity as Galbi grapples with being seen as a stranger in his birth country Switzerland and in his family’s homeland, Morocco.
He’s clearly an artist who thrives on keeping mobile. For some years Galbi has been juggling graft, studies and music projects, busking through Europe and basking in the soundscapes from rebetiko in Greece through flamenco and onto Algerian rai. Traces of these travels simmer through this debut set as does the influence of Tunisian master fusionist AMMAR 808, who, a few years back, catapulted North African overtones into the EDM enclave with his seminal ‘Mahgreb United’ album. It was Sofyann Ben Youssef (aka AMMAR 808) who encouraged Galbi to dive fully into electronic music and whose support filters through as chief mixer on ‘Ylh Bye Bye’.
Ben Youssef’s trip-hop, bass bin influence pumps up the beats of the brooding Kiss, a tense call out to someone who’s not listening which swells with chest pounding anticipation. Such darker wave atmospherics seep into the album closer Rruina, a song where the desperation rises as Galbi pleas for honesty about the past. “Tell me your secrets ya mama/Release my worries/Talk to me about the hidden, the hard truth/Don’t be ashamed before me” he sings, his voice searing through the pulsing bass drops.
Besides the deep themes, the beats and hot-wired synth lines, it’s the vocal variations which inject further freshness into these songs. The characteristic autotune, so distinct in today’s North African pop, adds some oily lubrication to the curling Arabic harmonies but there’s plenty more in Galbi’s production locker. Earthy spoken word, gritty rap and agit, fist punching chants all merge in ‘Ylh Bye Bye’s flow. On Patience, there’s even a swooning collab with singer/songwriter Ines Mouzoune, the two voices blending smoothly to let those silky chaâbi harmonies do their work.
The real surprises come when Galbi shakes free from convention and coaxes his electronic music to take a more experimental direction. On Dakchi Hani those nimble Anatolian psych guitar lines come forward matched with a giddy organ-toned synth hook. The drops are crisp and the twirling rock out coda feels like a full throttle Baba Zulu meets nineties rai encounter. Casaflex, which features Swiss electro-bass producer FlexFab, takes the acid folk fusions further out there in a quirky avant Euro style, all bagpipe tones, trap beats, rave whoops and walking basslines. Sounds implausible but somehow through Galbi’s new lens it somehow works. Perhaps though it’s the dramatic Win which is the most impressive, the beats at first broken then gathering a full percussive momentum. As the song reaches upwards, the angry scribbling synth solo multiplies itself then bathes in a wash of prog-like grandeur.
On these expansive tracks Galbi is gently pushing the boundaries of contemporary North African pop onwards without ignoring the fundamentals. ‘Ylh Bye Bye’ as a title fits the album perfectly. A Middle East phrase used often as a ‘see you’ in farewells, it says goodbye while looking forwards to future encounters. That’s something which this solid debut ensures for this intriguing new entrant onto the scene. Any tuned-in listener will be watching out for where Galbi goes next.
Get your copy of ‘Ylh Bye Bye‘ by Sami Galbi from your local record store or direct from Bongo Joe Records HERE
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