Salim El Baroudi - "Fatouma"

Earlier this year, Belgian label Radio Martiko reissued an album I'm somewhat obsessed with  - Hany Mehanna's The Miracle of the Seven Dances. If I included reissues in my Year End list considerations, it would be WAY up there. Now comes another RM release that challenges my strictures as I don't include compilations either. Zamaan Ya Sukkar chronicles the 1960s Cairo scene. And based on the four songs streaming it was quite the nightlife.

Tsvia Abarbanel - "Mi Nishkani"

I won't pretend to be up on my private pressing Yemenite jazz of the 1970s but I know enough to keep tabs on folks and labels who do know about these things. Fortuna Records are a Soundcloud follow I first came across when they posted material from Grazia. More recently they released the Eastern Soul EP from Tsvia Abarbanel and "Mi Nishkani" is a track I keep coming back to. The thumpy tom drum with its distortion is strangely beguiling and insistent and the same can be said for Abarbanel's soaring vocals. Plus there's this intensely jazzy riff on the piano that comes in and out and could've come from an Erroll Garner track.

I Ninhos Pega - "Pinha Taburim"

Record Store Day is just three more sleeps away, and one of the things I'm hoping pops up at my local shop is the Sonor Music Editions reissues including the soundtrack for La Seduzione. Check out this swanky sexual organ number.