"The amalgam of the exotic, the coquettish, the private and personal, the rhythmic and tribal, the spoken and unspoken, the space, the voice, the sound. These are the building blocks upon which a Natacha Atlas record is made. Upon listening, one feels that a most beautiful secret has been whispered in a quiet confessional." - David Arnold

Natacha Atlas's last album - Gedida, which appeared at the beginning of 1999 - saw her career and profile taking great strides - and that upward momentum is set to continue with the release of Ayeshteni.

In the UK, Gedida was an across-the-board critical success, and sold more than her previous releases combined, helped on its way by a national tour in the company of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and sold-out headlining shows at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. But in France it was another story altogether - there, the album made her into a genuine star. Propelled by the success of the single "Mon Amie La Rose", it's sold 130,000 copies on the other side of the channel, and Natacha went on to win the Best Female Singer category at the Victoires de La Musique awards - the French equivalent of the Brits. Natacha spent much of the year in Europe, playing to a 3000 strong crowd at the Paris Olympia and performing in every major town in France, before rounding off the year with an appearance at Jean-Michel Jarre's Millenium Night spectacular, in front of the pyramids at Giza.

After the breathless whirl of 1999, Natacha was no doubt grateful to find herself back in Cairo. Over the last decade, the city has been her spiritual home - and, increasingly, her actual home as well. She spent much of 2000 in Egypt - it was there that Ayeshteni took shape, and there that the album was recorded. And, perhaps more than any of her previous records, Ayeshteni offers in distilled form the pace and the passions of North Africa's Arabic imagination.

Natacha's songs open a gateway to a world of heightened emotion, all cinematic colours and captivating reveries, expressing dreamlike yearnings and impossible sadnesses with a filigree intensity that's held in check only by the technical precision of her breathtaking vocal performances. And, as the echoing, candle-lit spaces of the opening "Shubra" swiftly demonstrate, the sympathetic skills of Natacha's long-time producers and collaborators Tim Whelan and Hamid Mantu are once more in full effect. Throughout Ayeshteni, expressively swooping Arabic strings and sinuous Oud arpeggios thread their way though intricate, propulsive percussion arrangements, while the influence of dub is never far away from the deep pulse of the bass. It's the magical poise of the music - the delicate balance between the digital sheen of the production and the heartfelt immediacy of the melodies - that shines through.

For the European listener daunted by the fact that Natacha sings predominantly in Arabic, Ayeshteni opens a few tantalising doors. The second song in is her second ever English vocal (the first was "One Brief Moment", the collaboration with David Arnold that brought Gedida to a bewitching close), a cover version "I Put A Spell On You", the Screamin' Jay Hawkins showstopper previously blessed by the attentions of Nina Simone, amongst many, many others. Natacha's interpretation adds scratching, lunging string parts, and Arabic vocal inflections that climb to a vibrant conclusion. And later on in the album comes her take on Jacques Brel's timeless "Ne Me Quitte Pas", another classic of romantic disillusionment given an intoxicating North African makeover.

And the Arabic songs that make up the majority of Ayeshteni convey that trademark sense of yearning with equal immediacy. From the fluttering flutes and seductive sway of "Ashwa" to the melancholy gloss of "Mish Fadilak"; from the meditative immediacy and sonorous drones of "Rah" to the crisp, sparse Nitin Sawhney mix of "Manbai" that closes the record, Ayeshteni is emotionally consistent and compelling as anything Natacha has recorded.

Natacha's History...

Natacha Atlas (it's her real name) is of Egyptian ancestry - her family moved through Palestine from Meknes in Morocco some generations ago. She was born in an Arabic quarter of Brussels, and spent some time in Northampton as a teenager before returning to Brussels. After being involved in a number of short-lived projects, she found her way into Transglobal Underground's multi-cultural troupe at the beginning of the 90s, bringing her vocals to their riot of tonal colour, as well as contributing the raq sharki (belly dance) techniques that she learned as a teenager into the band's live performances. For the last five years, she has been concentrating increasingly on her solo career, and spending as much time as possible in Cairo, strengthing her bonds with her roots, immersing herself in shaabi, Egypt's indigenous bluesy pop music, and writing songs in Arabic. She brings this unique array of influences to bear on her music not simply by patchworking them together, but by synthesising them into something thrillingly new. She has made four albums as a solo artist - Diaspora (1995), Halim (1997), Gedida (1999) and Ayeshteni (2001).

...written July 2001