Algeria's El Foukr R'Assembly releases debut EP

Titled Look South, the musical project features six songs namely, ‘Medley with a Lady’, ‘Pain Retreat’, ‘Sand Reminiscence’, ‘Unarmed Corpse’, ‘Haggard Wonderer’ and ‘Saharan Redemption’. The songs are sung in different languages, namely Tamasheq, Berber, Haussa and Arabic.

The EP was released internationally through online platforms like iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify and Deezer. Physical copies will be available in 2017 in Algeria, France, the UK and the US. The group is still looking for distributors in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Look South is a sound manifesto of El Foukr R'Assembly, an African multi-national band founded by Algerian artists. Signed to Afreekyama Record Label, El Foukr R'Assembly has travelled across North Africa, the Sahel and the most remote places of the Sahara. The ensemble has already grabbed the attention of international media such as BBC Arabic, RFI Arabic, New York-based AfroPop magazine, a web-based magazine called Onorient and many others.      

In a statement, El Foukr R'Assembly's management said, “The EP is a uniquely captivating medley, very rooted in the space and context where it was conceived and composed. This EP was also the very first venture of El Foukr R'Assembly multimedia project, which has been on the road, wedding music and short documentary film to explore identity and contemporary African issues since 2014.”

Look South was recorded in a makeshift studio that is a stone's throw from the Tassili N'Ajjer desert, near the oasis of Djanet in far south-east Algeria. The group has already released a video for ‘Medley with a Lady’. The video was shot in Algeria and Ghana and features the group's future projects.

Founded in 2015, El Foukr R'Assembly is a collaboration between young Algerian underground artists in a far-flung Saharan region that stretches over Niger and Algeria. It was formed in a makeshift studio in Accra, Ghana. The seven-piece multi-national music ensemble was founded with the aim of continuously enhancing its debut recordings by travelling to Ghana, West Africa, hence the Look South project. Shortly afterwards, the group toured Ghana, after spending a year working on a crowdfunding campaign to finance the month-long trip.

Their tour gave birth to contemporary African music such as Afro-jazz, the upbeat Algerian rai, North African Gnawa, a soulful Sahel-Saharan mandingue, Ghanaian high-life and an urban West African Afro-salsa.