Argan - Biography, Discography & Albums

Biography

Argan ranks among multiple Moroccan ensembles that cut material for the Swiss Barbarity imprint, a label whose output revolves around the aesthetic first mapped out by the Moroccan collective Aisha Kandisha's Jarring Effects. Several principals from AKJE contributed in supporting capacities to Argan’s debut album that reached international distribution in 1996. The group fuses programmed electronics with banjo, darbukka, violin, and ney while pulling from rai, Western dance music, and dub. Even so, the results display less invention and daring than other Moroccan releases on the same Swiss label. Argan’s follow-up, the 1999 album South Moroccan Motor Berber, shifted greater weight onto electric guitar; when paired with electronics that sounded both more inventive and less polished, the album achieved a stronger strain of world fusion.