The Egyptian-born producer ABADIR and the French-born producer Nahash’s new release Marchadair مرشدير is built on multiple shared languages. There’s music, obviously: Both producers are interested in forward-thinking club sounds that draw from multiple traditions, in particular Arabic pop and dance music from the 90s and 2000s. But there’s also dialect—as ABADIR explains in our interview, there is a cache of French words that have been repurposed as Egyptian slang—and, perhaps most importantly, there is food.

“Food is really how we connected originally over Instagram, it’s the number one thing we talk about,” Nahash told me. “In the beginning, we wanted to make all the song titles different dishes we love, we have a pizza on the cover so I say we came pretty close.” Indeed, the release is four original tracks and two remixes of frenzied, pan-geographical club music, and it goes down like a delicious serving of Spaghetti alle vongole. We sent over some questions to the artists, read the interview and check out Marchadair مرشدير, which is out now on SVBKVLT, below. 

Where does the name of this project come from? How does that name relate to the music?

Nahash: Rami came up with the idea actually, so I’ll let him go into more details, to me it was really about putting the samples and music in a context that would translate our identities, and so Rami came up with a clever way to do that.

ABADIR: Yeah, I came up with the project’s name after we were done with the EP. The concept was already there when we first decided to work together. Nahash has a big collection of tapes of Arabic pop, I would get so excited every time he showed me his tapes and we talked about Arabic pop music from the 90s—it brought back so many good memories. So, Nahash made a folder full of cuts from some of these tapes and I worked on my own cuts as well, and we took it from there, combining our clubby sounds by using these samples and recontextualising them into something fresh and fit for the dancefloor. That being said, about the concept, I decided to find a good external link between our combined sounds, and between our common interests, so I thought language would be a perfect element to bring this all together. Over so many years, many French words have morphed into Egyptian slang. For instance, Marchadair مرشدير is originally marche arrière, which is the reverse driving mode in cars. Alaga ألاجة is originally élégance, which is elegance, and so on. The titles play on a symbolic link between us and our native languages and also mark the hybrid sound of the EP.

How did you approach drum programming and sampling on this new project?

Nahash: The samples I came up with are from my cassette collection of music from the Arab world, I'm always buying and looking for music with a particular focus on stuff that isn’t the classic sound of the 70s but more digital 90s and early 2000s, a lot of stuff from Egypt, Lebanon, and Algeria, but also some really obscure music from Kuwait, for example. I like sampling from analog sources with dust, grit and all, maybe because I love Madlib a bit too much. Drum programming reflects our common obsession with dancehall, jungle, and a lot of different sources that aren’t your average four by four techno beats. We added layers upon layers of traditional percussion mixed with Amen breaks and classic Roland drum sounds and then messed with them. I personally use the MPC a lot for drums so it’s a mix of poorly finger-drummed one hits and cut up breaks from dirty 45s.

ABADIR: I usually work on Ableton arrangement view, I like to see the waves and the audio clips clear in front of me. The way I work with Arabic drum samples is the same way I chop, tweak, process, and rearrange Amen breaks. The rest is about layering breaks of darabuka and riq, and adding other sounds like dof, sagat, claps, kick, hats, shakers, etc ... I chop a lot of audio clips so every project looks like a collage of clips. I use TikTok and YouTube a lot for drum sampling.

What kind of music were you listening to around the time you were making it?

Nahash: For the past year while we were making this EP, an embarrassing amount of salsa and cumbia and the usual amount of jazz, which is a lot. I feel that Rami connects more with modern club sounds, I’m always digging into older music because I buy a lot of records and tapes and I tend to keep up with modern pop because I work as a sound engineer, so I need to know what is going on—whether I enjoy it or not. As much as I like club music that comes out these days, if I'm buying groceries or moving around the city, I will be listening to a lot of old jungle or classic house, like Danny Tenaglia or whatever. With Rami we keep sending each other French disco house tracks or he hits me up with questions like ‘’Portishead or Massive Attack?” and we talk for three hours.

ABADIR: Right, ha ha! Exciting tricky questions out of the blue, like Portishead or Massive Attack, Roni Size or Adam F? I was listening to a lot of 90s pop and club hits during last summer and this summer. In between, I had phases of The Prodigy, King Crimson, Massive Attack, Talking Heads, early grime, of course the latest album from Beth Gibbons and a lot of traditional music from Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. All of that next to listening on repeat to recent releases by 1127, ZULI, 33EMYBW, Saint Abdullah & Eomac, Takkak Takkak, Oneohtrix Point Never, and revisiting Príncipe. Listening to club music and staying up to date is like homework for me since I’m DJing. 

How important is food to this collaboration?

Nahash: Food is really how we connected originally over Instagram, it’s the number one thing we talk about. In the beginning, we wanted to make all the song titles different dishes we love, we have a pizza on the cover so I say we came pretty close. Gaz from SVBKVLT was also very open to the idea of food, he appreciates good food. I grew up in a mixed Italian/Tunisian household and so Mediterranean food is my comfort food—olive oil, garlic, spice—and we absolutely connect on that level.

ABADIR: You forgot to mention meat! Don’t try to sound vegetarian ha ha. Yeah, we clicked well because of the food. We share on our DM a lot of what we eat, photos of dishes, general conversation about food, recipes sometimes. The great artwork made by Dave Gaskarth shows how food is important to our collaboration, he made sure to write the titles in the format of a food menu. For me, food and music are related, it’s a matter of taste, good food is equal to making good music. I live to eat, I don’t eat to live and I gatekeep the nice spots because there’s a lot of food posers around! 

Is there a favorite food that you like to eat together?

Nahash: Unfortunately most of our interactions have happened online. I live in Montreal and I don’t tour a lot because I have a pretty intense day job on top of all the rest. But last time we hung out was in Italy and had some delicious Spaghetti alle vongole and some very gross pizza with hard boiled eggs and mayonnaise … Somebody please book us B2B Bologna so we can eat the equivalent of our body weight in mortadella.

ABADIR: In that sense we need some promoters to book us in Bologna, Napoli, Belgrade for the meat, Athens, Lisbon, and Tbilisi. We can bring our own food when we’re booked in Germany, the Netherlands, Czech Rep., Hungary, and Poland.

Are you two dancing in the studio?

ABADIR: I work at home with my head/earphones and my laptop on my knee, sometimes on a desk for a change. So if this is my studio, I don’t dance that much, only shaking my shoulders and making some moves with my hands, that’s when I know for sure I’m doing a nice club track.

Nahash: I gotta sweat out all those carbs somehow and I sure as shit am not gonna go running in -20 weather here in Quebec, so yes, I dance around the studio, either to our productions or to Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson or “Humpin Around” by Bobby Brown because Jam and Lewis are gods, thank you very much.

Could you tell us a bit about the remixes you got for the release?

Nahash: Toumba was an obvious choice, he’s someone I consider a dear friend and an inspiration, the kid is a bit of genius when it comes to understanding the business side of dance music and more importantly he’s come such a long way in terms of production in such a short period of time, it’s almost scary. I just hope he gets enough sleep to be honest. Ehua I was less familiar with and it was a suggestion from Rami but it took exactly 30 seconds of listening to her music to understand that she was perfect for this. She embodies dancefloor intelligence for me, I can see her remix leveling many dancefloors in the future.

ABADIR: I was supposed to do a collab track with Toumba for TraTraTrax’s V/A no pare, sigue sigue 2, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to work on it, we were both touring. I wanted to work with him on something and I know that Nahash appreciates him as well, so that was the perfect chance. I was thinking about another producer from the club scene who could be a good match with Toumba, so Ehua is a perfect match especially because I appreciate her sense of rhythm and how she manipulates the low end. We suggested both of them to Gaz and he agreed.

What is the ideal context for the music on this EP?

ABADIR: Play it loud and dance in a big group or in a circle to digest a heavy meal. I find the vibe of the tracks more communal than individualist.

Nahash: Louder than the speed of light, in the club drinking Boga Cidre.