THE NATACHA ATLAS AND MARC EAGLETON PROJECT
Foretold in the Language of Dreams
Beggars Banquet
· Egyptian trance-ambient masterpiece!
World beat has provided some of the most exciting and excruciating musical moments of the last decade, often from the same artists. Afrocelt Sound System's first album was brilliant, but their second wasn't. Ekova acoustic – peerless. Ekova electronic – lost in the crowd.
The Franco-Egyptian Natacha Atlas has had her ups and downs as well. Her guest appearances for Transglobal Underground were too often buried under the beats, and her solo albums never live up to the promise of their singles.
The new collaboration between Atlas and Marc Eagleton, Foretold in the Language of Dreams, sets this right. It's a concept album of sorts – a collage of Sufi texts on one hand, a collage of Arab and electronic music (from techno to ambient) on the other, with Atlas's inimitable voice front and centre. No single track on the record is as riveting as her 1998 remake of "Mon Ami La Rose," but one track flows lovingly into the next as the mood shifts between the passionate and the contemplative, and the album as a whole more than lives up to the promise of its title.
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