Transglobal Underground

TransGlobal Underground is a U.K.-based collective fusing as many different kinds of world music as its members can get their hands on. The group's core is composed of vocalist Natacha Atlas (who has recorded with Jah Wobble, Apache Indian, and her own band, Atlas Project), keyboardist Alex Kasiek, drum programmer Man Tu, and founder, bassist, and sampler Count Dubulah. The project grew out of a mutual love for dance, avant-garde, Arabic, and world music and draws on each member's listening tastes and cultural backgrounds. Their debut album, Dream of 100 Nations, was released in 1994, quickly followed by International Times.

Even in the increasingly multicultural western musical landscape of the 1990s, Natacha Atlas has more right than most to claim multiculturalism. The half-Jewish Egyptian-Palestinian diva is fluent in four languages and, besides her training in classical singing, she trained in the raq shari, the art of bellydancing…

The '90s version of prog-rock meets the real thing on 1995's Deseo Remixes. Global Communication, Trans-Global Underground, Future Sound of London, and Deep Forest each contribute remixes of the world music project by Yes' Jon Anderson. The Deep Forest and Global Communication tracks are the highlights.

Even when paying homage to the Moroccan music she grew up with, vocalist Natacha Atlas can't help but let the multicultural and modern seep in. With bossa nova, Western pop, and just a thin slice of electronica figuring into the mix, the "back to my roots" album Mish Maoul is a rich collection of music that doesn't sound decorated but natural coming from an artist who prides herself in being a musical nomad. Easy to believe a nomad's memories of her homeland would be foggy and sentimental, and easy to believe the modern nomad's soundtrack would sound something like this – only something like this because this is far and away Atlas' most personal album. Suitably, she seems totally in charge of its construction, making interesting production choices with the help of Temple of Sound, Timothy Whelan, and others. For someone who has worked with Transglobal Underground, Art of Trance, and Jah Wobble in the past, the restraint Atlas uses on the rhythmic and ritualistic "Hayati Inta" is surprising and creates an intoxicating tension with only a slight bit of electric guitar revealing this isn't a field recording.

It would have been groundbreaking enough for the Israeli Ofra Haza to have performed an album of Yemeni Jewish songs. But when she and producer Bezalel Aloni added synthesizers, drum machines, and a generous helping of dance beats, they ended up creating one of the seminal records of world music–one of the very first ethno-techno releases whose reverberations extended into dance clubs around the globe, most especially with "Galbi." While its contemporary sound might make it seem shallow, there really is a lot of depth here, the lyrics coming from the poetry of 16th-century rabbi Shalom Shabazi. Along with fellow spirits like Dissidenten, Haza helped pave the way for Transglobal Underground, Natacha Atlas, and Banco de Gaia.

A collection of mixes and remixes of early Banco de Gaia tracks.
Inspired to enter the field of electronic music by Britain's acid house explosion of the late '80s, Toby Marks took quite a different spin on electronica with his recordings as Banco de Gaia, introducing elements of Eastern and Arabic music, sampling similarly exotic sources, and tying the whole to ambient-dub rhythms. Marks began releasing cassette-only albums in the early '90s, distributed through a network of clubs and artists known as Planet Dog. When Planet Dog became a record label as well (later the home of Eat Static and Timeshard), Banco de Gaia debuted on disc with the Desert Wind EP, released in November 1993.

1989 had been a long hot summer, but 1990 felt longer and hotter. Since the house music explosion of 1987, Britain had had a whistle in its mouth, and it needed a lie down. February 1990 brought two records that were made to accompany the sunrise and would shape the immediate future: The KLF’s Chill Out was a continuous journey, a woozy, reverb-laden mix; and Andrew Weatherall’s drastic remix of a Primal Scream album track – ‘Loaded’ – slowed down the pace on the dancefloor itself, right down to 98 beats per minute.

The late, great Pakistani Qawwali singer's first collaboration with producer/guitarist Michael Brook took the passionate, gymnastic tenor out of tradition and into trip-hop nation. Recorded at Peter Gabriel's expansive Real World Studios, the album combines ethnic percussion, programmed beats (some by Gabriel himself), Brook's atmospheric and infinite guitar swells, and loop-based motifs with Khan's complex, ornamented vocal delivery and devotional lyrics. On the later Night Song, Brook and Khan perfected their cross-cultural dialogue, though Mustt, with its fiery vocal runs and funky, ethereal production, has become an important touchstone in the ethno-techno movement that includes Transglobal Underground and Loop Guru.