For those unfamiliar with the music of Omar Souleyman, the Syrian wedding singer who transformed traditional dabke music into a hyperactive electronic stomp, it’s not like much else. It’s so fast that the only appropriate way to engage with it is to wriggle your limbs. Melodies are both abrasive and ebullient, chattering endlessly like raucous birdsong. For those who are – his 2013 album, Wenu Wenu, won him many fans in electronic music circles – Bahdeni Nami will seem no less energetic, and perhaps more beguiling. Working again with Four Tet as producer (as well as Gilles Peterson and Modeselektor), the emphasis is on clarity and richness of sound. The title track is irresistible, while Enssa El Aatab’s trilling percussion propels it through its 10-minute runtime. There is even, by Souleyman’s standards, a slow jam in the shape of the melancholic Darb el Hawa. His formula may not have been reinvented, but it has been refined, and now is the time to listen.
