After a successful 2020 with her two breakout EPs ‘Libra’ and ‘We don’t need to be enemies’, Sabrina Bellaouel is releasing the ‘Arab Liquor’ remix package and a brand new video. Bellaouel wrote the track about her experiences working as a waitress in a London Shisha Bar, and the video director Sarah Al Atassi flips the focus on female empowerment, intimacy, and the free expression of femininity. Oriental, traditional customs like shisha, mint tea, massage, hairdressing, and henna are sublimated and reclaimed by Sabrina’s entourage: a futuristic harem freed from societal shackles. The ‘Arab Liquor’ remix package will be released on May 28th on InFiné.
For the first of the new versions, Sabrina enlists one of Rap’s most exciting young talents for a border-crossing, futuristic remix of ‘Arab Liquor’. The young Dak, has his roots in the North Algeria. She knew she wanted to make that connection musically. Far away from the mainstream hotspots of trap and drill, UK and US, Dak and Sabrina are making a wave from their shared home of Algeria. The young duo pushes the luscious, female empowerment hymn of ‘Arab Liquor’ into a darker, more brooding sound. Proudly introducing: Algerian Drill! ‘She Don’t Care’ gets two remixes, an up-tempo tech-house version by Abel Ray that focuses on the original’s marimbas and is the perfect fit for sun-drenched open air gigs this summer. The other is a glitched-out, chopped and screwed drum whirlwind by Povoa, who took Sabrina’s original and turned it inside out. Last but not least is Tim Karbon, who took ‘Wish You Were Home’ with Gracy Hopkins and created a modern UK Garage version with it, a +130 bpm peak time bomb with chopped vocals and a huge baseline in the vein of the 2000’s London classics.
Sarah Al Atassli is a self-taught and versatile artist-filmmaker who first focused on body language and editing. She began directing in 2013, took part in alternative festivals, then joined La Fémis to lead a committed and hypersensitive auteur cinema. She graduated in 2017 after releasing Fist, the first film produced in her burgeoning career. Bleu Queen, Excalibur, and Not That Kind of Guy will follow. Hybrid format films between narrative & documentary which give pride of place to flesh-flaying outsiders, authentic characters dear to her mixed-cultural universe. Fascinated by bodies and action, Sarah films (anti-)heroes with passion, through a staging as raw as it is intense in emotion. After Ginkgo Biloba, carte blanche for Rone, she’s definitely committing to making music videos with Arab Liquor, released in 2021 for Sabrina Bellaouel. In parallel with these collaborations, Sarah is currently developing her first feature film: Suck My Kalash.
Listen to’Arab Liquor’ here: https://li.sten.to/SabrinaBellaouel
