Swaken is the second LP from French and Moroccan outfit Bar L' Bluz- whose name I take as a winking reference to the fact that they are literally playing a bluesified version of electric North African folk. The group, which is comprised of guembri-player, guitarists and musical polymath Brice Bottin, drummer Ibrahim Terkemani, Jérôme Bartolome on qraqeb, Mehdi Chaib on flute, and vocalist and awisha-player Yousra Mansour, are not the kinds of kin who play with their cards too close to their chest, instead putting all of their influences, loves, concerns and affections out into the open in a swirl of passion and a well-practiced prayer so that they might enchant and commune with those whose hearts are open enough to receive their message. A strange and wonderful union of Tuareg rhythms, Ethiopian imbued flourishes, and Moroccan melodies intersect with full-bodied and barrel-chested hard rock idioms, siphoned from the thunderclap of Led Zepplin and Jimi Hendrix, summits at the crossroads of Swaken, a confluence of mutually uplift, which emboldens and transforms each of the group's boldly outlined identity markers in a sublated syntheses of globe-spanning sonic harmony. While many of the clear callbacks on this record harken to the boisterous debut of the heavy blues, the combined effect of the electric string work and Yousra sandstorm-swept vocals is something closer to Perry Farrell's solo work, reminiscently recapturing that artist's sweeping sense of boundless vision and high-registered air of bohemian intellect which grasps for a more elevated benchmark of understanding wherever it makes footfall. For such a "rock" centered effort, the Swaken is also heavily indebted to trance music, extending the free state of movement and liquid consciousness that electronic music affords through the synthesis of resilient patterns of traditional folk percussion and a misty veil of psychedelic ebullience- connecting the new with the old in a momentous cascade towards a more enlightened state of mind. Close your eyes and lose yourself in the sound of Bab L' Bluz, and you might just find yourself awakening to a new world of possibilities.
