A proper icon in the Arab world, which she subjugates and irritates at the same time with her freedom and swaying of the hips, Lebanese Yasmine Hamdan is releasing the spin-off of her third solo album, Al Jamilat (recorded in the studio of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and released in 2017), with a remix album straightforwardly titled Jamilat Reprise. An exercise in style that lends itself nicely to the personality of an artist who has flirted with electronic music throughout her career, from her first band Soapkills, which revealed her onto the independent scene, before expanding her horizons, at first with Y.A.S., the duo she formed with Mirwais for the album Arabology, then with Jim Jarmush’s film Only Lovers Left Alive selected at the Cannes film festival in 2013. She who “dreaded sounding like world music” surrounded herself with a rock-solid cast of reputable producers, including Parisian duo Acid Arab, who borrow Café’s guitar riff and loop it on an 80s electro beat full of torpor, the elegant Mexican composer Cubenx, from the label InFiné, who remixes the characteristic trip-hop sounds of K2 and the creative German trio Brandt Brauer Frick who reinterpret Choubi in their distinctive style. Another highlight is the version of Al Jamilat by Matias Aguayo, the founder of the precious label Cómeme, who took this opportunity to dive deep in his “hypnotic percussions that send people into a trance”, as well as La Ba’den revisited by Shed, a highly respected producer on the contemporary techno scene, who signs here one of the most beautiful tracks of an album where no one is aiming straight for the dance floor, each artist seemingly searching for the special sensitivity emanating from each song of the immensely gifted Lebanese singer. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz