Limited edition of 250, with full color 23 by 33 poster designed and painted by G.Loli. Mutamassik (= tenacity in Arabic) is the musical avatar of Giulia Loli, who merges Egyptian percussions with hardcore breaks. The result, sometimes dubbed Sa'aidi hardcore & Baladi breakbeats is a mutant, syncopated form of instrumental hip-hop. The history of Giulia Loli herself is marked by fluid borders, being born in Italy of an Egyptian mother, moving to the United States in her childhood, staying in Egypt for a while, and recently moving back to a hilly region of Italy. Durning and between her journeys she has worked with a.o. David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, Ikue Mori, Marc Ribot, Kaffe Matthews, Hamid Drake, Morgan Craft, etc. What Mutamassik proposes here is collection of tracks bearing resemblance to pages torn off a tormented diary, with a complex array of emotions : anger, angst, gloom, pride, faith, isolation, anguish, etc. The circular rhythms are fusing acoustic instruments ( Re'qs, Mazhar, Douf, Cello! Ð all of them played by G.Loli - ) and electronic tones. The whole is contextualized and augmented by the nuances of voices, sometimes vocoded, and field recordings culled from Tuscany, Egypt and various other locations. Often bittersweet and brooding, the raw fuzz of the music evokes an insular and somewhat fracturedforce, balancing between the abstract and the confrontational. These tracks will take you for a ride in sprawling afro-asiatic melodies and elaborate, circonvoluted developments. Quotes about Mutamassik : Mutamassik's pounding Egyptian hip-hop breaks... are serious, sacred, steadfast marchingmusic for the new international breakbeat generation.' [Ron Nachmann]. 'Dans un mélange d'électronique et de hip-hop, Mutamassik s'engage dans la reconstruction des arabesque, mélopées de minarets se croisent dans un magma de sons urbains, structurés par d'impressionnants alliages rythmiques'. [Le Monde]. 'Mutamassik is on her own path' [Ear Conditioning]