Stepping further out of their usual genre-boundaries of dark, experimental productions, this latest offering from Cairo-based label, Sound of Noize, comes from label founder, sound engineer and producer, ESSPERX, and label newcomer, Kayaljd.
Featuring an intense, occult-tinged video by Nour Gad and animator Muhammad 'Memonto' Mahmoud, ‘The Five Adventures’ could be roughly categorised as a form of ‘Arabic trap’. It features a heavily exoticised melodic arrangement over standard trap percussion; icy triplet hi-hat rolls, booming 808s and a tight drum kit all form the rhythmic backbone of ‘The Five Adventures’, driving the track along throughout it’s brief three-minute runtime.
The issue is that the beat behind ‘The Five Adventures’ is pretty simplistic when lined-up against the label’s more expansive repertoire of releases and more attention to instrumental groove and flow could well have elevated the track into something else completely. The last quarter of the track, however, is when new ideas finally begin getting introduced to the piece of the whole, and we see it leaning closer to the cacophonous sonic signatures of other Sound of Noize releases via warped and distorted vocal sampling, however combined with the repetitive beat.
SceneNoise once referred to Sound of Noize as the ‘label championing the music others won’t’ - a claim that ESSPERX (real name Eslam Salah) was happy to wear as a badge, though it does put the label in a position whereby ‘growth’ is difficult. If they can explore different varieties of music while maintaining that quintessential Sound of Noize aesthetic and approach - as was attempted here - then that could very well spell even more promising horizons for a label that is still only two years old.
Read out interview with Sound of Noize here.
