Zoom

Astonishingly, Rachid Taha continues to produce high-quality, interesting, engaging albums. Twenty years after re-inventing himself as a solo artist combining rock, electronic dance music, and popular music forms of the Maghreb, and five or six years after splitting from his longtime musical collaborator and most of his band, Taha has released his eighth studio album. After his last foray, Bonjour, with a pop-oriented French producer, this time he chose to join forces with Justin Adams, a Brit best known for his desert-blues work with Tinariwen and Robert Plant. This record, unsurprisingly, has a lot of distorted guitar and computer-generated bass. There is less mandolute than Taha's longtime fans will like; only a couple tracks feature the instrument. But there's a lot to love on this record - the title track, a tribute to Oum Kalthoum; rock 'n' rai dance number Khalouni, women's rights ballad Jamila. There are also some missteps, most notably a version of pop standard It's Now Or Never as a duet with a female singer. (One almost expects some misguided duet from a Rachid Taha record.)Zoom is full of guest artists, including Mick Jones of the Clash and Brian Eno, who contributes to a very successful re-invention of Taha's anti-anti-immigrant screed, Voila Voila. My heart dropped when I saw that on the track list -- Taha has at least four other versions of the song on various albums -- but this one is totally different and justifies itself immediately.On the whole, this isn't quite up to the standard of Taha's best work (for me, Tekitoi, the two Diwan records, Made In Medina, and 1, 2, 3 soleils . . . .), but that's an awfully high standard. And it comes much closer than most of Bonjour did. What's really important is that it represents an artist who insists on exploring new paths and continuing to grow well into his sixth decade.

Fantastic CD, totally recommend it. Original sound & very creative. Loved it.