Kareem Lotfy - QTT10 (2018)

Following an uncredited appearance of his ‘Fr3sh’ gem (off PAN’s Mono No Aware comp) on the new Kayne album, Cairo’s Kareem Lotfy gives a broader account of himself in a lush addition to the Quiet Time Tapes series

On QTT10 Kareem reprises and expands on the billowing aesthetics and melancholy feel of Fr3sh across a 33 minute set that reveals hitherto unheard aspects of his sound, from windswept rhythms to textured field recordings and vaporous dub influences.

In opener Asmar he pursues a sound somewhere between the mutating abstractions of Wanda Group and Xth Réflexion, while the layered field recordings and FM interceptions of Sundial Radio hint at an ancient futurism that come to light in sublime style, and Chromosome sounds out into vast ambient space between Global Communications and AFX’s SAW II - and we don’t use either of those comparisons lightly.

With GTO he inverts that epicness to a charming, lower case intimacy that effortlessly flows into the pastoral simulacra of Equilibrium, and Second Seed seems to bifurcate between a push and pull of sheer, alert high end tones and the secuctively hypnagogic attraction of the murky mid-ground, with Kwkab resolving the album at an gently upward ambient slant.