Consumer Guide Album

Kadef: Kadef [RR Gems, 2023]
K is for karma, A is for agape, D is for discernment, E is for enactment, and F is for freedom on this wordily annotated double-LP of Arab-inflected trance music that, for the record, sounds decisively richer and more present on the vinyl they've put up for sale than on the Spotify stream. When I say wordy I'm not kidding except insofar as I'm referring to written language as opposed to blabber—a total of eight LP-jacket-sized pages bearing three smallish-print columns of type, thousands of words all-told. The four pages I got through and the other four I skimmed bear not a single reference to the music they supposedly reference in the course of an unrelenting if less than politically practical attack on economic injustice. Which in an attempt co compensate by pinning down the music proper inspired me to jot down such descriptives as "vivid," "lovely," "detailed," "changeable," "intense," and by no means let me forget "ululating." A−