Sea Urchin - Tahtib (2019)

Leila Hassan and Francesco Cavaliere’s Sea Urchin blow new age kisses and woozy thought bubbles about Egyptian martial arts in a Arabic and Italian over crimped cubist computer dub and ambient styles.

“Tahtib is food for your mystical post-exotica musical landscape - hand drums played by computers fall with a squelch into the swamp, horses neigh at dub bassists, there’s water everywhere full of urchins and tarot cards and just when you think you need to breathe this record breathes for you. Tahtib’s future ambient glyphs are matched with the rapid-fire staccato "taks” of imaginary tahtib sticks (tahtib is an Upper Egyptian martial art which was enjoyed and practiced by Leila's grandfather Baba Aly). Leila Hassan sings seamlessly between Arabic and Italian (and possibly more) breathing pure soundart alchemy across Francesco Cavaliere’s library of sound effects and textures.

You remember Sea Urchin? They added their signature aquatics to Osaka-native 7FO’s 7” for Bokeh back in 2017. The duo of Leila Hassan and Francesco Cavaliere debuted a totally unique expression of ‘library music as future music’ on a series of small run cassettes before their proper debut LP Yaqaza was released on legendary Belgian imprint Kraak (Pan American, Limpe Fuchs, Typhonian Highlife). This caught the ear of Bokeh designer svengali Patrick Savile, who adds his vision to the LP cover. Francesco has also released solo explorations on Hundebiss (Kelman Duran, Lil Ugly Mane) and Edições Cn (Dolphins Into The Future).”