Search - Lili Boniche :: Alger Alger

Producer and A.P.C. records founder Jean Touitou has found a gem in Algerian-Jewish musician Lili Boniche. With his left-handed Stratocaster and a string-heavy octet, Boniche makes a compelling amalgam of North African-French-Spanish root styles, with a twist of cabaret thrown in from his experience over the decades. Touitou enlisted Bill Laswell as a coproducer for Alger Alger, and the New Yorker adds adroitly in-step bass and synthesizer touches to Boniche's crew of topflight musicians, including Armand Suissa on derbouka and trap-drummer Mardoche Maimaran contributing the drummy percussion. Recorded "live" in the studio over two days, Boniche's band veers between a playful pan-Andalusian-Algerian mix of styles and a rhythmic pulse that reveals shades of rai, flamenco, Gypsy styles aplenty, and even klezmer. After these sessions were recorded and edited, the tapes were shipped to New York, where Laswell piloted some ambient studio work, culminating in Boniche Dub. --Derek Rath