Drawing on the large repertoire of Middle-eastern pop and Egyptian film from the 1940s to 1990s, Love and Revenge create a fertile hybrid between the joys of the past and modern aesthetics. Rayess Bek remixes ancient melodies and break-beat blows, with the electrifying support of Mehdi Haddab on oud and Julien Perraudeau’s hypnotic synths. Adding a striking visual dimension, Joan Baz performs live video on the music, composing a tapestry of archival Arabic cinema. It’s a shamanic ceremony whose stanzas invoke the resurgence of a lost time when the Arab world was joyous and candid in its wit, passionate and immoderate in its dramas and melodramas.