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Bio
The band’s body of work mainly explores the terrain of Arabic popular music (“Shaabi”) and its interconnectedness with other psychedelic and hypnotic musical genres in the world, such as free jazz, space jazz, and psychedelic rock among others. Since its inception, Praed has shown a very keen interest in this music as a medium that reflects Egyptian society’s complicated fabric. Through the research it conducted, the band began to discover a strong cultural connection between “Shaabi” sounds and the “Mouled” music is played in religious trance ceremonies. The hypnotizing psychedelic effect that was embedded in this genre also triggered thoughts around its similarity to other popular music in the world that employ forms of sonic delirium, such as free jazz and psychedelic rock. Bob Baker Fish wrote in the cyclic defrost on July 15th 2016 : They also sound like nothing else around…anywhere. Sure they’re mining an exotic aspect of Arabic popular culture, yet they’re doing so in such an exciting and groundbreaking way, referencing freejazz and electronic music and in the process creating new and hitherto unknown genres of sound that sets the pulse racing. You can’t ask for much more than that.....