Guedra Guedra - Mutant


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MUTANT follows Guedra Guedra’s 2020 Son of Sun EP (“Hassak has always made it his goal to showcase the innate connection between traditional Moroccan rhythms and electronic music, and that is exactly what he delivers” - Resident Advisor) and his debut full-length, 2021’s Vexillology (“Propulsive and complex… On Vexillology, Hassak extrapolates the underlying rhythms of the north African diaspora to present a new realisation of this enticing, pervasive pulse” - The Guardian, Global Album of the Month).

Building on the innovations of these records, MUTANT finds Guedra Guedra committing to incorporating a growing array of Pan-African polyrhythms into the dancefloor. His music serves as a form of resistance and a process of decolonization, a call to imagine spaces that passionately embrace marginalized voices and African presence, and to question power dynamics within the realms of art. “This reappropriation of spaces for musical creation and celebration is of utmost importance in Afrofuturism,” says Abdellah. “It overturns power relations and valorizes cultures and ancestral knowledge, while placing the issues of memory, ownership, and access at the heart of the decolonial debate.”

In the process of developing and sculpting his sound, Guedra Guedra is exploring his identity as an artist in Morocco, a country with a complex history that incorporates aspects of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) area and other parts of the African continent into its cultural heritage. “Some people in Morocco will say, ‘we are Arab’; the other one will say, ‘no, we are Amazigh.’ I talk about myself as a Moroccan,” says Abdellah. “We are in the context of the Arab world, but at the same time we are in the context of Africa, which was also colonized by French people.” Abdellah sees Guedra Guedra as a project of technological as well as cultural decolonization. “Mainstream music production software has often carried biases, reflecting the cultural dominance of the West and excluding non-western configurations of sounds and beats,” he says. “By utilizing machines and orienting them towards polyrhythmic Sub-Saharan and North Africa, MUTANT contributes to a more inclusive and representative technological dimension of bass music production.”

MUTANT is a revolutionary record, an ingenious meld of the organic and the electronic. While Guedra Guedra’s samples and field recordings celebrate the diverse folk music history and heritage of Africa, his drum programming and synth work across the album reinterpret these sounds for dance floors. As Abdellah says, he’s “researching rhythm, researching sound, researching people. I said, ‘I need to learn more about African culture.’ I’m learning at the same time as I’m doing this music.”

Format / LP
Released / 08/29/2025
Catalogue / SUGW-10A
Barcode / 192152051013
Artist / Guedra Guedra
Label / Smugglers Way
Genre / Electronic

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