It’s just as dark, just as blistering and powerful, but with sharper details, nuanced rhythms. Arabic-speaking techno from mnjm in Berlin reinvigorates the genre by shedding some of its cookie-cutter repetition and making it come alive all over again.
Take the title track “Taboot” on the release out today from Selim El Sadek, aka Seleem, the Cairo-and-Berlin-based artist. If you were planning to rock back and forth, rag-doll style, to a dance you learned on TikTok, this track seems composed intentionally to throw you off-balance. Manic vocal samples echo above the duple techno framework; catchy off-beat digital mayhem flies around your head. Oh, your feet can stay four-on-the-floor, but you might need to grow an extra limb or two to keep up.
Both Seleem and debut Elayn have staked out some new genre territory. This is uptempo, fast stuff, but – also hypnotic. It’s quirky at times. Elements take on more dry production, freed from YouTube videos on sticking everything in a warehouse. For Seleem, that means more room to play, and faster grooves that still feel mobile.
That’s in keeping with other DIY techno scenes, who I notice are also playing more freely with groove. Who wants to party in church, anyway?
As Seleem’s notes on the debut say:
“Sculpting faces, sculptured spaces, distorted memories and sharp flashes. Do you feel what I am feeling? I’m sure I’m not the only one who bears this weight. The complex weave of waiting intertwines threads of resilience with uncertainty. Each moment suspended in stillness becomes a subtle thrum of existence, an elusive whisper caught between hope and the heaviness of what is.”
Elayn goes deeper and adds more reverb, to be sure. But there are sweeping sonic landscapes and, as in Seleem’s work, plastic and glitchy mangled samples, borrowing some of the production adventurousness found in other genres. Track titles like “Bab Antaeya” refer to places in Damascus and elsewhere in his native Syria. It’s a reminder that for all the scene’s toxicity, techno can still hold potential as a way of processing trauma – not just goth pastiche and dystopia tourism, but actual emotional meaning, healing with scars. With spectral gymnastics and complex, organic reprocessed samples taking on new alien forms, cuts like “Shagaf” are deeply experimental – but you can still dare to play them on a dancefloor.
I appreciate the headphone duality, as I break with some of my techno colleagues on enjoying proper listening sessions with the genre. It also defies categorization as peak hour or not, being nicely ambiguous about which slot you imagine.
And honestly, if it seems like I’m obsessed with the Arab population, it was always a safe bet for the group that would drag techno out of retro-minimalist sameness. No new culture is ever invented in a vacuum. Techno in Berlin and across Germany became a world-leading scene partly because it was invigorated by collaborations with Afro-American influence, whether Tresor coupling with Detroit artists or Thomas Fehlmann and others inviting Latinx artists. In the 2010s and 2020s, the inbound community to note wasn’t US Americans anymore – it was Arabic, Syrian, and Ukrainian artists. This time, they’ve simply self-organized into their own communities and carried on.
Big Berlin clubs haven’t necessarily adapted to those incoming scenes; the “neutral” space can be hostile to the narratives brought by independent artists. (For instance, when called out for silencing artists on Palestine, Berghain responded by removing reference to Ukraine.) Relevance generally doesn’t last forever. Even CNN has figured out crowds are looking elsewhere. It’s the embodiment of the old Yogi Berra adage: “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Maybe the same could be said about a lot of the music. Reduced to Ableton Live templates and sample packs, techno lost some of the experimentation and nonconformity. mnjm is one to watch because, finally, it makes techno weird again.
mnjm has their launch party Saturday at Fitzroy. You could be partying while other people are stuck standing around in front of METRO. They join London’s Makaan – well, this diaspora is basically everywhere.
Milad Samara is also on the lineup, who has joined my radio program, during a time of my shorter beard:
“Do you feel what I’m feeling?”
Yes. Techno, commercialized as it has become, can still be a way to bear weight together, all while dancing.