The Algeria Issue Mixtape

[split] What’s on a Radio Tashweesh mix? Radio Tashweesh is a mensual podcast that I release over SoundCloud. It’s sound poetry: a mix of music, film samples and other sounds from all over the Arab world. There’s a theme per edition, usually a soundscape from an Arab city. It’s an invitation to travel through sound to Cairo, Alexandria, Algiers… How does Algiers sound? Algiers is peculiar, at once noisy and calm. I’d love to work on recording its real soundscape one day – the ceaseless car horns, screaming children, seagulls, the noise of coffee machines intercut with the shouts of fruit and veg’ sellers and maybe, lightly, the sound of chaabi music. What’s happening in the underground scene? There’s independent structures established elsewhere, in Cairo or Beirut, that are missing here. A lot of people are producing, but there’s a lot of work to do to establish an alternative scene with gigs and festivals. How do you manage? I do what I can with the time that I have. I always say that DIY works in Algiers.