Always “trash & kitsch”, The mighty parisian musicans-producers duet DuOuD – Mehdi Haddab & Smadj are back with a long-awaited new album MENSHEN produced by David Husser!
The meeting of the oud with electronic music
DuOuD had released a very noticed first album in 2002 “Wild Serenade” (Label Bleu). Then an all too rare gem “Sakat” with the Yemeni master Abdulatif Yagoub in 2006. Since “Pink Kong” released in 2009 by World Village, we had lost track of the duo. On break. Or better said on other personal or collective projects.
We left them between tradition and futurism, brilliantly manhandling a timeless instrument, the oud.
Always “trash & kitsch”, they come back with a long-awaited album “MENSHEN“.
A repertoire already prowled in China, Corsica, Australia, Panama, India, Albania, Burundi among other stages.
Album in their image. Smadj & Mehdi Haddab are as much pranksters as the Menshen who represent them on the album. Door guardians in Chinese iconography. Characters that go in pairs, funny and mystical at the same time; as much as these two very same musicians.
Assumed playfulness, respectful insolence. An oxymoron of this ilk. “Les enfants terribles” of the oud are back! Reckless as ever: “Smadj & Mehdi Haddab are not only the guardians of a door: they bless the movement that makes the threshold pass, in one direction or the other”. Bertrand Dicale
