a few years ago i was looking the remix catalogue for system 7 after being very much into their versions of ozric tentacles' "sunhair" and joujouka's "aoki uro". this item stood out because of the stature of taha as an raï artist and system 7 as an electronic music act which at this this time was mainly doing psytrance. however when looking deeper it wasn't that random really.
the producer of "non non non" was steve hillage of system 7 and gong and has been a collaborator of taha ever since the mid 80's. taha is one of the raï artists that wanted to make different type of raï music and mix in rock music and other elements from "western music". this kind of thing isn't anything new as some artists that operate in a local music genre want to do something else than just the regular.
as far as raï artists go, taha isn't the first one to make something more directed towards paris and london than algiers. one of the biggest stars of the genre, khaled (or cheb khaled as he was known as first) made his crossover breakthrough when collaborating with don was. that resulted in hits such as "n'ssi n'ssi", "didi" and later on "aisha".
but it doesn't stop there, former married couple fadela & sahraoui scored a fluke hit in '87 with "n'sil fik" which used drum machines and the likes. that record has been heard in uses of sampling as cheb sahraoui's chant in the beginning has been employed by coldcut, lennie de ice and bomb the bass amongst others. now with this blatant attempt at crossover appeal, you could take it even further in '77 when libyan singer ahmad fakroun made disco records on the request of his manager. one of which was recut and extended by french dj & producer prince language back in '07 which spawned some new interest in fakrouns music.
basically, it isn't anything new that you hear traits of so called exotic music in some music that is mainly dominated by a core of fairly traditional homogeneous sounds (to it's genres). but it is always interesting when the person from the other side of the fence is doing. it's no secret that goa & psy-trance employs all sorts of chants, sounds and imagery raided from all parts of the globe.
somehow i like to think it is part of the post-hippie pseudo-spiritualism that psychedelic trance wants to employ. with that include melodies that use musical scales from traditionally arabic or hindu regions, i believe in musical terms it's called the aeolian scale and has to do with the halftones and quatertones used. now we have done all that sidetrack, which is why no one really cares about this blog as most of the time it's superfluous text which you can piece together with wikipedia and discogs, so let's get down to this track.
"non non non" comes from an album that sounds nothing like it, it's a psy-trance song in proper system 7 style, it reminds me also a bit of ben watkins style at the time. lyrically it's a protest song and social commentary on the arabic immigrants in france. it's kind of interesting in this case as it's very much of what acts like fun-da-mental were doing in the 90's as well but on different kind of beats.
for the remix steve hillage didn't really do any changes, beyond taking most of the vocals sans the "non non non" chant that appears sporadically. it's more of a case of extending the track and letting musical elements take their time pushing frequencies in the soundscape. it's all built on a firm base of a four on the floor tribal groove with a typical goa-esque bassline which later is strengthened with acid squelches and the all the trimmings.
the track kicks off fast and then builds a bit for a small peak before taking it down and this time the actually builds proper. the acidline that appear prominent in each bar builds so much tension that used properly this goes off hard in a set. anyone who likes this should seek out more of system 7's works, it's well recommended
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