Deena Abdelwahed new album Khonnar on Infiné Music

If you don’t yet know Deena Abdelwahed, might we recommend that you start getting familiar with her work as a DJ? After starting out in Tunis as part of the World Full of Bass collective, Deena went on to Toulouse to play with the Arabstazy collective. She met the InFiné team in 2016, quickly securing a range of tour dates from Concrete to Boiler Room, Villette Sonique, Wet for Me, CTM (“Hail Mother Internet”), Room for Resistance, Säule (Berghain) and Rewire Festival. Deena undoubtedly put Tunisia on the electronic music map. But it would be off-topic to categorize her on the basis of her origins alone: Deena is the archetype of a globalized generation of internet natives for whom borders are an outdated concept. This self-taught musician also didn’t wait to have her knowledge delivered to her on a silver platter.

What Deena wants is to discover the sound of the future, regardless of geographic origins, and format – from vinyl to MP3, all are welcome to the mixing board. Her DJ sets throw open the doors of her research laboratory, on the razor’s edge of club music and avant-garde, where only as-yet-unheard rhythms on the outer reaches of sub-cultures are allowed to come and play. The foundation for this future that she is building is a wake-up call, an alarm call even, tuned to break the pathological indifference ravaging our jaded times: novelty and audacity are required to get even a shot at a place in Deena’s transgender, hybrid playlists. A human and artistic sincerity that is without fail feeds her work as a composer, which should be distinguished from her DJing endeavours. Because while the DJ draws from all that the world has to offer, it is the inner landscapes that her composer alter-ego explores. Traces of the history through which Deena built herself as an artist and a person are thus uncovered: a self-construction made of frustrations and constraints, borne of retrograde mindsets which are not the prerogative of either the East or the West, she tirelessly strives to expose and break down.

Release date 6 November 2018
01. Saratan
02. Ababab
03. Tawa
04. Fdhiha
05. Ken Skett
06. Al Hobb Al Mouharreb
07. 5 5
08. A Scream In The Consciousness
09. Rabbouni