DISSIDENTEN‘S GROUNDBREAKING ALBUM “SAHARA ELEKTRIK” REMASTERED VINYL

Get Your Album here: Release – November 25, 2022

DISSIDENTEN‘S GROUNDBREAKING ALBUM
“SAHARA ELEKTRIK” REMASTERED
ALL YOU EVER HEARD ABOUT IT IS TRUE!

40 years traveling across the boundaries of musical genres, almost 30 albums, hundreds of concerts and millions of streams have won Dissidenten a wonderfully eclectic audience around the planet. Today, they are still pioneers of the world beat movement. Already in the eighties “New York Times” named them pioneers of what would later become worldwide known as “World Music”. Now, almost 40 years after its first release, their legendary album “Sahara Elektrik” was remastered on vinyl. Thereby “Sahara Elektrik” experiences an unexpected rebirth and conveys up close the musical awakening of those early years.

Michael Hann, The Guardian, GB:

You don’t need to know anything about Dissidenten to hear the wonder of Sahara Elektrik. It seems to begin with a musical pause for breath, as if the musicians realise they’ve got a long journey ahead of them. A stringed instrument – an oud jumps in and sprints ahead, like a lone rider setting off before the full caravan – the bass, the percussion, the voices – follows on behind. It’s music that fires the imagination: It’s vivid and dramatic, swooping and soaring, sometimes sunny and sometimes stormy, digressing from its route to visit solos, but returning always to that unrelenting topline melody. Sahara Elektrik feels to me like an exploration of an imagined North Africa, one where implausible excitement and unspoiled beauty exist side by side. If I were to make a comparison, it would not be to another record, but to the Indiana Jones films – it’s not real, it’s a good job it’s not real, but imagine if the world really were like this! Visit Dissidenten’s world: it’s addictive.“

José Miguel Lopez, Ritmos Étnicos, Spanish National Radio III:

“Sahara Elektrik is the Bible or the Koran of World Music, the one that marks the birth of the genre. It’s an extraordinary piece of work, released in 1984, in which a group of German rockers worked alongside and on equal footing with another group of Moroccans who were as well already considered ahead of their time in North Africa.

This album, performed by Dissidenten together with Lem Chaheb, changed the course of contemporary popular music. It was the first time that a work merged together two distinct types of music originating from different cultures without one prevailing over the other. It was a progressive approach since it used rock music’s most innovative language at the time together with the most open and cosmopolitan facets of Maghrebian music.”

DISSIDENTEN & LEM CHAHEB – SAHARA ELEKTRIK

This album was cut from a high-resolution (96Khz24bit) digital transfer from the original analogue master tape. No additional digital limiting was applied. Minimal sympathetic equalisation have been made to keep everything as pure as possible. The mastering was done in 1983 for ‘vinyl only’.

Side A
1. Inshallah 6:54
2. Fata Morgana 6:46
3. El Mounadi 6:22
4. Shadows Go Arab Intro 0:46

Side B
1. Sahara Elektrik 11:26
2. Casablanca – Wacha Wacha 10:28

All compositions by Dissidenten & Lem Chaheb, Morocco 1981-84

During almost 40 years, differing variations of SAHARA ELEKTRIK have been released around the globe. This remastered edition finally covers all historically correct data.

Friedo Josch – Flute
Uve Müllrich – Bass, Guitar
Marlon Klein – Drums, Keyboards
Mathias Keul – Synthesizer, Bass on ‘El Mounadi’
Cherif My. Lamrani – Vocals, Mandolin Cello, Percussion
Mbark Chadili – Vocals, Percussion
Mohammed Ayoubi – Vocals, Percussion

Recorded with Exil Mobile Studios at Palais Abdesalam Akaaboune, Kasbah Tanger, Morocco & HGM-Studios ‘Königshof’, Germany
Engineered by Gunni Heidler, Marlon Klein
Produced by Marlon Klein for Exil Musikproduktion & Verlag GmbH
Remaster/Mastering by Marlon Klein at Exil Musik Studios

Photography by Erin Lindbergh
Cover Design by Hartmut Bremer, Uve Müllrich, Atelier Niedernjesa
Redesign by FUEGO/Friedel Muders

Label: Exil Musik – Distribution: Indigo

Supported by Initiative Musik gGmbH with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media.