If this were one of the Egyptian expatriate’s previous releases under the name ABADIR, I might have written “pathbreaking electronic artist”. But despite the fact that Rami remains one of the most interesting DJs working today, the semantic restriction imposed by this designation does this record a disservice.
While The Primitivist was made using the same type of tools Abadir has deployed throughout his recording career, it sounds more like a field recording than the antiseptically minimalist fare that has long dominated clubs and raves.
From opening track “Habban” through the cheekily titled “This Is Not Another Maqsoum”, The Primitivist never lets up, pounding us with Middle-Eastern polyrhythms at BPMs that make Chic’s “Le Freak” sound like a Barry White slow jam.
That Abadir manages to sustain this intensity without retreating into the hermetically sealed soundscape of minimal techno is a testament to his production skills.
When I interview him about the record, he tells me that “finding the most suitable samples is the main key of the record”. That lays the foundation. “The rest is a lot of cutting, editing, processing these samples while working on the arrangement in parallel.”
“The rhythm I’m sampling is definitely not used as a drag and drop to Ableton”, Abadir adds. “I’m cutting it up into smaller bits which creates pockets to fill in with other sounds. In other cases, I’m using single drum shots to build the rhythm. Then I add kicks and bass, and the sampled, cut-up melody, and I process and EQ all of that.”
In other words, The Primitivist doesn’t capture the street through passive recording of real-world environments, but through a painstaking process of sonic collage.
Abadir understands the dangers in this approach. Taking fragments out of context and reassembling them into new configurations frequently leads to problematic cultural appropriation. That’s why he does extensive research on his source material.
“Before using the samples”, he explains, “I need to understand their background by asking around, reading and watching a lot.”
My first impression of The Primitivist, heard through my inexpensive Bluetooth headphones while out on a hike, was that it doesn’t give you much time or space to catch your breath. But I didn’t mind.
The Primitivist transforms claustrophobia into a welcome sensation. The music pulls you into a vortex of pure physicality, where you crave collision with other bodies.
That is also true of the dance floors and tent-covered fields where Europeans are accustomed to getting down. What makes Abadir’s approach different is that he bypasses the sordid aspects of the EDM scene, offering a pure experience of rhythm that transcends superficial thrill-seeking.
This makes sense, given that the EP’s liner notes describe it as a rejection of the techno-dystopianism that plagues that world, a subject Abadir also addresses in a remarkable essay titled “The Aesthetics of Darkness in Electronic Music: Between Dystopian Lures and Futuristic Fixations“.
“For a long time I was resisting the idea of making music using Arabic percussion and instruments”, he elaborates, “although I love Arabic music. . . I didn’t want to make music that can be exoticised by others.”
The longer Abadir worked within European electronic music culture, however, the more frustrated he became with this self-imposed constraint. Growing up in Egypt, he had naturally absorbed a lot of Arabic music. Why shy away from it?
Although he recognised that “working with this kind of concept could be tricky”, he decided that it was worth the risk. “There’s no way to completely escape exoticism”, he tells me. “But there’s still so much potential in Arabic music that I can reclaim from exotic narratives.”
The fruit of this breakthrough was Abadir’s 2022 album Mutate, which integrated all his influences into songs that repudiate easy dichotomies.
Ison, released the following year, used field recordings from several different Christian sects to problematise the distinction between East and West in a different way.
Now Abadir has taken the exploration of his musical roots to a new level, producing a rejoinder to the dark teleology implicit within electronic dance culture/
“Basically. I see futurism as a very Western term used to decipher something new or unheard or unseen”, he continues. “In the context of someone coming from the Global South, calling their sound futuristic is the easiest lazy shortcut to describe their sound from a Western lens.”
Primitive cultures have often been invoked in science fiction contexts, in narratives about both the near and distant future. So have those civilisations which, while once comparatively advanced, are now contrasted unfavourably with Western modernity.
In an era when climate change threatens to turn the once-temperate lands of Europe, North America, and East Asia into desert wastes, Abadir’s native North Africa serves a paradoxical rhetorical purpose. On the one hand, its ruins remind us that progress isn’t inevitable. On the other hand, the way its current inhabitants cope with scarcity suggests that getting back to basics may be the best way to ensure humanity’s survival.
Unfortunately, even when this comparison derives from admiration rather than contempt, it still reeks of the mindset Edward Said explored in his landmark book Orientalism.
With The Primitivist, Abadir confronts the musical manifestation of this dynamic head-on.
“Instead of understanding, asking around, researching and having a material contact with this sound and culture”, he says, “listeners trapped within the logic of EDM would rather impose their narrative and call this music futuristic”. What results is “a kind of othering”.
The Primitivist demonstrates that it’s possible to “make advanced and adventurous electronic music” that is “deeply rooted in rich cultures and traditions” while avoiding the assumptions of futurism.
“The Global North is somehow obsessed with progress, acceleration, speed, the next new thing, which are all part of liberal capitalist values,” Abadir tells me. As a result, “the Global South finds itself forced somehow to follow its path. So here I used the term Primitivism as a provocation, as an antidote to Futurism”.
“I’m more interested in our roots and in the present,” he clarifies, “rather than the unknown future that others are speculating about and obsessed with. In that sense, I’m very far away from the science fiction orientalist take, since I’m invoking the present moment rooted in rich cultures from the Arab region.”
Abadir clearly put a great deal of thought into The Primitivist. But that doesn’t mean the record is bogged down by introspection.
“The music of The Primitivist is meant to be danced to in groups or circles”, he emphasises. “It’s very communal.”
At this point in our interview, Abadir underscores his commitment to respecting his sources. Although his workflow necessitates detaching sounds from their original context, he does his best to recontextualise them.
“Take, for instance, the Dahhiya music influence that you can find in ‘This is not Another Maqsoum’ and the Mijzwiz sample found in The Primitivist, he says. “Or the Dabke influence found in ‘Pass & Go ‘, or the Sharbaka—hand clapping technique—found in the middle section of ‘Habban’ and towards the end of The Primitivist: This is all music to be danced to in groups.”
What distinguishes this mode of music-making from the sort typically found at clubs and raves is the way it organises human interaction.
There is a crucial difference between merely being part of a crowd, in the modern sense of the term, and making a circle.
In the former case, the connection between individuals never transcends the technological apparatus that facilitates their coming together. In the latter, by contrast, an overwhelming sensation of presence magically dissolves all barriers to solidarity.
“I can’t force that on an audience from Europe or the UK”, Abadir admits. “But I can see something happening from time to time, and I really appreciate it a lot; when the crowd is not facing the producer or the DJ, and they’re facing the sounds system or facing and dancing with each other.”
In an era when people struggle to sustain any connection that isn’t mediated by technology, we badly need that type of communal experience in our lives.
The Primitivist is a product of deep thought, reminding us not to prioritise thinking over feeling.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
