MAI MAI MAI - Karakoz

The heavy breathing of a battered territory, the dense shadows of a conflict still under way. It's 2024 when Toni Cutrone arrives in Palestine for an artistic residency promoted by Radio Alhara and Wonder Cabinet. A profound experience, lived between Bethlehem and Ramallah, from which "Karakoz" is born, the latest work under the Mai Mai Mai name, intersecting and merging the pressing concerns of our present with the roots of an ancient land. An ideal convergence conceived as memory and testimony of a raw present. A precise intent that entrusts the storytelling to sound, drawing on the contribution of experimental musicians, timbres of tradition, and texts and conversations drawn from archives or captured on location.

The resulting shape is that of a complex substrate, created by juxtaposing the Calabrian artist's electronic/industrial matrix – kept here in the background – with rhythmic patterns, voices and resonances of Arab culture. A grieving fabric that unfolds between mourning songs ("Grief", performed by Maya Al Khaldi), hybrid soundscapes (the collaboration with Alabaster DePlume on the splendid "Echoes Of The Harvest") and pulsing, tribal-flavored textures (the hypnotic "Old Poem Made Of Sand", with Jihad Shouibi's percussion to the fore).

Middle Eastern heritage remains dominant even when underpinned by deep synthetic beats ("Dawn On The Cremisan Valley") or immersed in tension-laden noise drifts ("Jinn Of The Bethlehem Souk"), generating a deeply atmospheric journey that describes pain without self-pity, trying to extract glimmers of beauty from the rubble.

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28/04/2026