M.F. – Goz Khawagat [CS]

"A Colourful Storm’s specialist/selector sub-label Fleetway Tapes follows aces by Time Is Away, DJ Nobu, and Vladimir Ivkovic with a properly genius session from Cairo’s mysterious M.F., deploying a full range of heat-seeking North African and middle eastern aces, bangers and deep cuts fuelled by field recordings, radio phone-ins and sub-rattling pedal worship, in finest, sickest style.

Picked by a raï specialist with links to Nashazphone and Sublime Frequencies, the ‘Goz Khawagat’ mixtape goes fully in on contemporary and impossible-to-ID cuts parsed from private hauls of Middle Eastern and North African tapes, field recordings and radio broadcasts. Up there with the best dial-harvesting comps on Sublime Frequencies, it’s presented as a “soundtrack for walking the streets of Cairo”, marshalling an hour of roadwise hymns and Arabic street rave bullets that don’t let up on the passionate vox, rugged polyrhythms and blazing keyboards. 

A perfect partner to a recent slew of Algerian raï retrospectives and Cairene zones spotlighted on the Heat Crimes label, it’s an all-killer-no-filler haul of gems clearly put together by someone with deepest knowledge. Big tunes are liberally interspersed with the sounds of lasses cracking up over jokes on the radio into the sort of vibes that would make Timbaland go weak at the knees, and more often heard streaming from cars in a sort of doppler effect in our Manc locales. The fidelity fluctuates from upfront to 5th hand worn tape style, amplifying the almost holographic whiff of strolling the Khan el-Khalili in the high heat.

Supreme fire, 10/10."

Fleetway Tapes, 2025