Cairo-born electronic music producer Dallo has recently unveiled his first project of 2025, a full-length studio album titled ‘Dahab Rayeh Gy’. The album serves as a personal exploration of his life in between two cities, Cairo and Dahab, the latter of which has frequently proved to be a source of inspiration in his earlier works, notably ‘Mangam Dahab’ and ‘Ya Tal3een El Gabal’.
Playing with the idiosyncratic tapestry of Egyptian street sounds, the nine-track record contrasts the polarising environments of the two cities, blending elements from Egyptian folklore, maqam, mawwāl and mahragant with contemporary electronic beats of lo-fi and electronica.
‘Fe Eh?’, the album’s opener, is an ear-piercing post-shaabi tune propelled by a gritty mahragant beat, featuring rolling synths and incessant drum patterns with a looping auto-tuned two-word verse that serves as a sonic manifesto of the overstimulating chaotic energy of life in Cairo. The track sets the core roots which the rest of the album springs from.
As we move through the album, there are tracks like ‘Dalma’, ‘Raheb’ and ‘Elahy’, which are more ambient and mellow in production, underscoring Dallo’s self-reflection and spiritual journey amidst the mountains of Sinai. Though emotional melodies of rebab and oud strings and atmospheric soundscapes carry the structure of said tracks, they are frequently intersected with sparse kicks and steady percussion, akin to the pieces of Cairo noise that Dallo still carries when he travels to Dahab.
For instance, on ‘Elahy’, featuring Egyptian composer and oud-player Abdallah Khaled on vocals, Dallo fuses sonic cues of sufi rhythms with a flurry of melodic and tribal house music. Meanwhile, ‘Mersal Ly Habebty’ is more of a pumping mix of mawwāl and sufi trance, featuring free-verse colloquial poetry sung by Ali El Helbawy.
‘Ana Ghareeb’ is more of a melancholic electro-shaabi jam, featuring introspective lyricism by Abdallah Khaled that echoes the sensibilities of Abdel Basset Hamouda and hypnotic chord progressions.
There is a sense of push and pull between the pulsating noise textures and the melodic beats that are ever-present throughout the record, mirroring the duality of Dallo’s personal experience, and his attempts to reconcile the sounds of Cairo and Dahab within his own identity, resulting into one colourful yet cohesive body of work that speaks of his artistic potential.
