TUL8TE - Cocktail Ghena’y (Album + Live Session)

Tul8te (a transliteration of the Arabic تووليت, meant to be read and pronounced like the English phrase "too late") is an Egyptian artist about whom little is known. His identity remains a mystery, since his face is always covered by a knitted balaclava, his whereabouts are unknown, and it's unclear how he achieved success without any significant media backing.

Only in the second half of 2024 did he sign to Mdlbeast, a fast-rising Saudi label that is carving out a leading role in the Arab world's entertainment industry, but up to that point his music had been supported by very small independent labels — which didn't stop the single "Layalina," released in early 2024 as part of the album "Tesh Shabab," from racking up millions of streams on Spotify, YouTube and local platforms alike.

The mystery of a withheld identity can sometimes work in an artist's favor, as seen in Italy with the case of Liberato, and the originality of the music on offer here is certainly notable too, but the same could be said of plenty of other artists who never managed to make ends meet. Whatever mix of favorable factors was at play, Tul8te is currently a leading name on the Egyptian music scene.

The album marking his move to Mdlbeast came out on July 25, 2024; its official title in the Latin alphabet is "Cocktail Ghena'y" (musical cocktail), while in Arabic it's كوكتيل غنائي للفنان تووليت حصرياً لحبايب قلبي (transliteration: "Cocktail Ghena'y El Fannan Tul8te Hasriyyan El Habayeb Qalbi"), which translates as: "Musical cocktail by the artist Tul8te, exclusively for my loved ones."

The opening track, "Mateegy A3ady Aleiky," starts with a percussive pattern that seems to nod to "Sympathy For The Devil" by the Rolling Stones, but it's a short-lived illusion: once the other instruments come in, the track morphs into a blend of Arabic pop and flamenco, with the vocals treated with echo and autotune (the latter runs throughout the album, but is used sparingly, mainly to add a bit of timbral shading without ever overwhelming the artist's natural vocal color).

The result might recall "Cara Italy" by Ghali, but with a production that leans more towards independent music, and more specifically towards the bedroom pop strand: after all, as Tul8te himself has stated, the album was recorded entirely in his bedroom.

"Leh Benkhaby" is a jazz-tinged pop number with lounge tones and an eye on música popular brasileira, while "Habeeby Leh" embraces a sparse programmed rhythm, plausibly derived from the Iqa'a Sa'idi (for a primer on the iqa'at of Arabic music, see the excellent Maqam World database), an echoing voice that recalls cloud rap effects (given that Tul8te is a singer through and through, who only occasionally tries his hand at rapping), and a melody steeped in the romanticism of Arabic pop classics: journalist Jubran Haddad suggests it may be a tribute to Amr Diab, one of the historic names of Egyptian music, and to his "Habibi" (1988).

"Nafs El Kalam El Baghaneeh" sinks into a blanket of atmospheric synths and r&b beats, while "Ba'eet Waheed" returns to flamenco, one of the most fertile sources of cross-pollination in Arabic pop — just think of the classic "Ouna" by Libyan-Egyptian artist Hamid El Shaeri, who in 1987 was among the first local musicians to find success by pairing a flamenco arrangement with an ethereal, echo-laden vocal line. This all feels perfectly natural, given that flamenco itself was born as a fusion of Roma and Arab-Andalusian culture.

"Ba'eet Waheed" is also the first track in the running order whose lyrics don't deal with romantic anguish (a theme that works perfectly well within the songs, if unremarkable on its own), but rather with a feeling of existential disorientation that has long run through the more refined side of Arabic music (just think of Hamza Namira):

It was I who chose to live far away and hide from life,

and I've seen so many people, yet found no peace of mind.

I was once naive, now I wonder what's wrong with me,

a million questions, but not a single answer in my mind.

Why doesn't love ever come?

I was left alone with the sky.

I have words inside me that cannot be spoken, and I've chosen to live in detachment.

Is there something that comforts us, or something new to lighten the days?

And then you see something in the distance, suddenly it reaches you, and suddenly you're afraid of it.

Next come “3eneeki Loon El Sama Beleil”, one step away from synthwave, and “Ezbet El Haggana Feen?”, downtempo built on flanger-treated drums, both featuring electric guitar solos in their closing sections, clean-toned in the first and saturated and distorted in the second. The latter has the other interesting lyric on the record, again with a psychoanalytic slant:

We're walking, but we don't know where we're going,

lost in the streets and houses at night

and there's no one but us around,

but usually it's crowded

and when it starts to rain, everyone shuts their doors

and the days slip through your hands,

but maybe all of this is just illusions, tomorrow will reveal it

and we'll forget what has passed, even if we never reached it.

And if this isn't the way,

that's fine, we're not troubled,

and we keep walking,

but where are we going?

The closing track "Lesa Baree'" is a transcontinental mutation, pulling in the two Americas (bossa nova rhythm, rapped verse) and the Arab world in the chant-like melodies of the chorus and the effected backing vocals.

The "Cocktail Ghena'y" project has a second chapter, though: on November 15, 2024, Tul8te released, in both audio and video format, a live session version of the album, played in a single take with a band of five anonymous musicians backing him.

Although the studio album is already excellent, the live session manages to surpass it. The tracklist has been reshuffled, but the songs are the same (with the sole exception of "Lesa Baree'", which has been replaced by the hit from early 2024, "Layalina"), and the arrangements are almost identical, but with two substantial improvements: first, the music has room to breathe (as shown by the 30-minute total runtime, compared to the 22 minutes of the original version), with more space for solos and digressions; second, the post-production is much lighter, which makes the sound more organic.

Listening to the live session, what emerges is not only the originality and quality of the songs, but also that of the musicians involved: just think of the unprecedented salsa piano coda in "Mateegy A3ady Aleiky", the guitar solo in "3eneeki Loon El Sama Beleil", decidedly more virtuosic than the original one, or the extended intros of "Leh Benkhaby" and "Nafs El Kalam El Baghaneeh".

With its wide range of approaches, Tul8te's music could intrigue fans even outside the Arab world, as suggested by the world tour recently announced (he'll also play in Milan on February 9) and the interview he gave last October for the Grammy Awards website.

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27/01/2025