Tunisian producer unveils a mutant and hedonist techno album.
Following her 2017 debut EP, the producer and DJ member of the Arabstazy collective continues the adventure with French label InFiné for her album titled “Khonnar”.
Pronounced “Ronnar”, it is a term that makes the most of Tunisia’s cultural and linguistic spectrum. It evokes the dark, shameful and disturbing side of things, the one we usually seek to hide, but which Deena instead sticks our noses in with her music that blends bass, techno and experimental.
That ambience sets in from the first seconds of debut full-length Khonnar. It’s in the Barcelona studio of Edu Tarradas (better known as Clip), an inveterate collector of modular synthesizers, analog drum machines and other hardwares that Deena recorded a large part of this album. Khonnar, an untranslatable Tunisian word that evokes the dark, shameful and disturbing side of things, is a kick in the anthill of the morbid consensus, a tidal wave through the murky waters of obscurantism, which highlights what we usually seek, on the contrary, to hide. With application and determination, Deena sticks our noses in what we naively believed was under rug swept: that is the Khonnar.
Listen to Khonnar here. Find Deena Abdelwahed in our Afro Club Exp. playlist on Spotify and Deezer.
