Two weeks after releasing on-topic track, ‘Ihna Inhabasna’ (We’re locked Up), Jordanian indie-rock band, Autostrad, have delivered another new song that isn’t as explicitly related to the Corona-induced quarantine, but one that speaks of a longing and a seclusion all the same.
Repeated lines like ‘Where are you?’ and ‘Your mind forgets me, but I don’t forget you’, suggest ‘Ghareeb’ (Strange) to be a melancholic song, but think of it more as being wistful, maybe even pensive. What keeps it from wandering into melancholy is an incredibly catchy keyboard melody that harks back to Arabic pop-rock of yesteryear. Think Egypt’s Mohamed Mounir in the early eighties. Or – and this is a weird one – think Syrian tour de force, Omar Souleyman, in a different dimension, one where techno isn’t the driving force behind his music.
The video, naturally, suffers from the self-isolation imposed by the pandemic. It settles for sequences that use the tried-and-tested psychedelic image-mirroring, with other elements such as colour-bleeding and visual glitches also used. It could be argued that it adds little to the track, but it does at least fluctuate to the beat and melody of the song, like some kind of experimental digital visualiser.
Check out #SceneNoise's last interview with the band below.
