ABADIR

It’s a pleasure to have Rami Abadir returning to CTM Festival. The highly respected Cairo-born producer has been upending the traditions of Arabic music for years now, twisting heads and ears with the tantalizing combo of Egyptian maqsoum rhythms with jungle, footwork and Jersey club unleashed within his ‘22 SVBKVLT album Mutate. His ‘26 EP The Primitivist hustles this thinking further, challenging electronic music's fixation on futurism and technological progress. Berlin-based, ABADIR spent years working as an engineer, an aspect that feeds his work as much as his curiosity about culture and politics and his love of sound. Drawing on musical traditions from across the Arab region, he’s interested in what happens when you take cultural knowledge seriously enough to question and transform it. He’s spoken openly about the cultural inferiority complex produced by Western dominance, and an industry that celebrates diversity while still expecting artists to make themselves legible through Western categories.

• The Primitivist, by ABADIR

• The Primitivist, by ABADIR