“Who are you?” “Who am I?” It sounds like there’s an existential storm broiling deep inside the soul of France’s number 1 musical upsetter.
‘Tékitoi?’, the title of the latest in a long line of probing, provocative and highly original Rachid Taha releases, is a punchy piece of French street lingo whose tone actually says something more like “Who the hell are you?”. “I dreamed of singing my nightmares,” says Taha. The apocalyptic vision of a society careering into a wall was the impetus for a marathon of questioning; his motives, other people’s motives, the dirty victory of experience over innocence, the root causes of the virulent anger and chaos that grips our world. That’s what makes ‘Tékitoi’ Taha’s most harrowing and yet fascinating album to date. And in the midst of it all there’s ‘Rock El Casbah’, an homage to the late great Joe Strummer, a man’s whose unvarnished honesty and lack of text-book punk cynicism made him a hero, to Taha and to many others.
The album is initially released as a limited edition double album including additional 50 minute DVD. It then reverts to the single album (WRASS126)