Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniwy - Dying Is The Internet (Dekmantel) [Global Bass / Experimental]

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's March 22nd Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

I wasn’t aware of either of these artists before this release, but it appears that Simo Popp started off in eclectic electronic fashion, before deciding that putting cheap, ill-chosen speakers and headphones to the sword with fierce bass frequencies was his calling - I don’t envy his neighbours. Egyptian Abdullah Miniwy is a lot of things: expressionist, writer, singer, composer, trumpet player, 3D generalist (programmer) and actor, who has gamely teamed up with Cell to ride the future global bass riddims whilst imparting his Arabic take on the internet’s corporate, surveillance capitalism-driven enshittification.

Simo Cell

Abdullah Miniwy

I would have liked the album anyway, just for its obvious quality and digital fatigue premise, but after the events in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza in the last couple of years, the vocal ambiguity afforded by the Arabic vocals, coupled with the speaker-worrying bass, contemporary and futuristic riddims plus the take-no-prisoners vibe, has afforded this album of perfect club fodder, the dual quality of being a pretty perfect soundtrack to my ears for the present day Middle-Eastern shit show.

The mood is menacing; the riddims - rather like our unrelenting, catastrophe-laden newsfeeds is urgent and insistent. This is next-generation Fourth World music for smoke machine (are they still a thing?) filled dance floors in abandoned, brazenly squatted clubs. To my uneducated Western ears, the autotune twisted vocals variously sound like cries of despair from war-displaced refugees, defiant bellows from proud people affected by the decisions of politicians near and far, shouts for help and demands for vengeance that will echo through the generations; as the beats pierce the speakers and the low frequencies turn the listening space to rubble. It’s a heavy album. Turn it up.

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Playlist Companion

Find the duo in the End of Week Freak Playlist.