El Mahdy Jr. Ghost Tapes

The haunting collages of Turkey resident El Mahdy Jr come to discrepant with the appropriately named Ghost Tapes LP. Born in Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria, El Mahdy Jr. and his family fled the Civil war of his native Algeria in the 90 s, relocating to Turkey. Upon returning years later to Algeria, Mahdy started working as a French-Arabic translator, first in Algeria and later in Burkina Faso. Sick in bed with malaria, he began to paint sonic pictures of his travels in exile; digitally decoding a hazy trance- induced melting of his native Algerian music, Turkish folk, the furious Poly-Rhythms of West Africa, and his love of slow, low slung Rap beats. The result was the acclaimed LP 'The Spirit of Fucked Up Places' (Boomarm Nation, 2013). Ghost Tapes goes deeper into El Mahdy's very own personal soundspace, in the artist words: ''Ghost Tapes is a composition of everyday fragments based on found tapes, field recordings, beats and radio frequencies. A ruff attempt of interpreting the cultural ghost that surrounds the field and makes the difference between place and space.'' El Mahdy Jr, 2015