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Riding over an urgent, North African infected groove, Chi Ci Talia? is the latest preview from Crimi’s forthcoming Luci e Guai LP - an eight-song serving stitching together Algerian raï, hard New Orleans funk and Sicilian folk balladry that comes out on French imprint Airfono this April. Formed in 2018, Crimi finds Julien, a musician with over 20 years of experience, collaborating with a brand new trio of players. However, it is the singer & sax player’s past ventures that combine to explain how he hit on this sound specifically his work with Mazalda, from Lyon, who evolved from jazzy pop oddballs into a drum-heavy live dance party with their own fifty-speaker traveling Soundsystem, the ‘Turbo Clap Station’. In recent years, they branched out into raï – first meeting Algerian singer Cheb Lakhdar and backing him in a series of concerts, and later recording an album, El Ndjoum, with Sofiane Saidi, a star of raï’s new electro-wave who’s also featured with Parisian duo Acid Arab. (Mazalda and Sofiane proved
