Kalashnik Love

Speed Caravan’s debut album Kalashnik Love —its title track a furious homage to Udi Hrant— combines tradition and future, ancient and urban, beauty and fury to stun-gunning effect. Laden with special guests and throbbing with raw rock energy it references everyone from The Cure and The Chemical Brothers to Algerian rai and other Arabic influences. The sublime result of several year’s worth of incendiary live touring, it is fusion – but not (hurrah!) as we know it.

Rewind, for a moment, to 2002. Haddab and Tunisian-born Jean-Pierre ‘Smadj’ Smadja are in the middle of a world tour with DuOud (“I felt like I was on some sort of Tuareg caravan with all the travelling on planes and cars and things”).  Somewhere along the way Haddab got hold of a purpose-built electric oud  (“I been changing my acoustic oud over to electric”) and after testing the new instrument’s potential onstage and off, put plans for a new project into action.

Haddab had wanted to work with bass player and long-time friend Pascal ‘Pasco’ Teillet for a while. “Pasco really understands Arabic music and scales,” he says. “He started coming over to my house and we’d work on new and old songs and play late into night most nights. I was going through a divorce at the time,” he adds with a sigh. “So I was very available.”

After signing up electronic beat mistress and former Ekova member Hermione Frank, Speed Caravan started playing live as a trio. Word of mouth spread. The bookings kept on coming. Audiences marvelled at Haddab’s flamboyant, frenetic style (not for nothing has he been called the Hendrix of the oud); at the way Pasco’s bass underlined the oud’s arabesques; at the way Frank grooved at her computer, throwing in some beats here, twiddling a dial there. Later they would marvel at the deft percussion skills and throaty vocals of Moroccan-born Mohamed ‘Simo’ Bouamar, who kept the vibe firmly in the East.

A multitude of other artists marvelled, too. Many clamoured to climb aboard.   Kalashnik Love duly boasts an army of like-minded collaborators: sound engineer and sonic architect David Hussar. Rachid Taha, the rai rebel himself, weighing in on an urgent version of The Cure’s Killing An Arab; a song inspired by the Albert Camus novel The Outsider and —wrested back from Crawley’s Robert Smith and sung for the most part by Wattie Delay from Alsace— given even more complex meaning.

“I had forgotten about that song entirely, and then I found it on an old Cure cassette” says Haddab. “I thought it would be interesting for a non-western band to perform— it becomes instantly political.”

Want politics? A cover version of The Chemical Brothers’ Galvanise grabs by the scruff and doesn’t let go. Adding their own rage to the already considerable fury of the Berber-music-sampling original are Spex MC of Asian Dub Foundation; Algira, Rabah and Deymed of Algiers-based hiphop outfit Micro Bries le Silence; and civil rights activist Paul Kendall. “The Chemical Brothers were using Arabic music to shock,” says Haddab of the English electro rock duo. “We’re hitting them back with another interpretation, like you would in a racquet game.”

Yemeni singer Abdulatif Yacoub and guitarist Rudolphe Burger join in on Qat Market, an ode to the psychotropic plant (“You gotta have a drug track; this is rock ‘n’ roll!”). The pounding, relentless Dubai —featuring vocals by Simo, Asian Dub Foundation’s Rocky Singh and Richard Archer from indie-rock gods Hard-Fi— is an indictment of the dross beneath the gloss of the mirage city. Erotic Chiftetelli is an aural pitstop that caresses and revives via oud, guitars and sensual feminine whispers. Even speed caravans need to take a break.

Buoyed by percussionists Arnaud Dieterlen, Rocky Singh and Raban Khalfa (usually heard backing Algerian chanteuse Souad Massi) the Udi Hrant tune Parov Yegar Siroon Var begins measured and thoughtful then revs off into space; the same percussion trio are there on Idemo Dalje, a track that features a traditional Bulgarian melody courtesy of young Serbian synthesiser prodigy, Viorel Tajkuna. Hotel Zyannides **** is a traditional melody from Algeria’s hawzi style, developed in collaboration with musicians in northwest Algeria’s Tlemcen province. “In a hotel,” says Haddab, “that pretended to be four star.”

Renowned Breton vocalist Erik Marchand takes on all-time oud classic Daddy Lolo by Armenian oud rock icon Chick Ganimian (“A definite musical relative of Dick Dale”); a once-heard never forgotten tune that given the Speed Caravan treatment, hurtles into a head-banging party. Algira, Rabah and Deymed from MBS turn up again on Aissa Wah, a wah-wah laden paean to Sufi trance. Remixes of both tracks add final touches to the album: celebrated British producer Sidestepper gives us a visionary Daddy Lolo. Malian innovator Mo DJ works his magic on Aissa Wah.

Kalashnik Love is, then, some album; one born of rage, and rock, and love.

“The oud comes from the desert, where water is precious.” Haddab’s voice softens. “It looks like a water bowl. It’s shaped like a teardrop. There is no instrument for me that is better.” He flashes a grin. “Soft or loud,” he says.

Words by Jane Cornwell