Rumba argelina

"The album features almost as many styles as it does instruments, yet they tend to come together as one new style, rather than sounding like a musical salad ... Dominated by the crumhorns and the melancholy tenor of Javier Raibal, "Nu Alrest" carries a potent charge of fantasy and sadness, conjuring images of crossing the desert alone on camel. It is imagination like this that makes Rumba Argelina one of the most important world music albums of the 1990s".

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"Top of the world" - "When Rumba Argelina blasted the late Benjamín Escoriza and his Moorish sidemen to the fore of Spanish flamenco fusion in the mid-90s, it recentred the spirit and origin to somewhere in North Africa. Argelina means 'Algerian,' and there are shades of the Sahara, snakecharmers and market square mystics in the spiralling flutes and kif-induced dreamy beats ... Yet this is entirely original, bespoke music, feeding on jazz, Gypsy music, Caribbean rhythms, cumbia-esque accordion riffs and flamenco palos. And if Escoriza can intone his rough-hewn Andalusian Spanish as movingly as any mullah can recite his Quranic Arabic, he is driven by Western melody rather than the 52 ancient Eastern modes. The best fusion experiments not only open up a new door for firsttime listeners; they add something novel, but powerful, for those who are familiar with the source material ... One of the landmarks of new music, this still rocks traditions, blows away mirages".