Sababa 5
"From the very first track, I knew I'd be programming them one day..."
A slow, magnetic rise, a breath of sound that lifts the dust from inner roads and deposits mirages of Mediterranean melodies on the skin. One listen and the world turns upside down: the groove settles in deeply, thoughts lighten, time dilates. Psychedelic without cliché, analog beauty without nostalgic demonstration, their sound is a warm current that crosses the night like a luminous caravan and makes us lose our footing a little; we drift, we land, we dream in broad daylight.
PROG IS SOMETIMES JUST A PHIL...
Where and when did you first hear them?
At home, in the middle of winter, on an Iggy Pop show on the BBC that I'd been urged to listen to for the selecta...and there it was. In one track, just one, everything changed. Listened to ten times in one day. The kind of track that requires no verica0on, no hindsight. Just obvious. From the first listen, I knew they'd be part of the fes0val. No need for study, no need for live performance. Just an immediate crush.
3 words to describe their music?
Dreamlike. Psychedelic. Mediterranean. Analog music from the '70s with a taste of the Orient, centered on groove and winding melodies. It's simply beautiful, with that Wrecking Crew elegance that holds the column, and lets the dream do the rest. Their music floats like a waking dream, suspending time and opening up inner landscapes. It distorts reality, makes you float, and leads you into a luminous trance whose every melody breathes the warmth of the shores and the perfumes of the Orient, in the hues of an ancient world they themselves have reinvented.
When you close your eyes to their sound and imagine a scene, what does it sound like?
Aboard a battered 4×4 in a mountainous desert, dust in the air, horizon trembling. You're there and not there at the same time, carried along by a rhythmic solitude that lifts and lightens you. It could be on a train, or on a sofa for that matter, the road is mental but the journey is real...
A Line-up anecdote?
Mix Line-up , but not festival line-up! After discovering this track, I had an irrepressible urge to slip it into the mix I was preparing for the opening act for Carl Cox and Blessed Madonna at the Yeah Festival... but its psychedelic rhythm made it difficult to get right. The next day, Laurent G. told me about a dj who had played an absolutely brilliant sound... The famous track, for crying out loud. So, as I couldn't set it up the way I wanted, I made up for it by programming them.