Friday, August 29, 2008

Laura Khalil - Raweq A'sabak

Unlike its predecessor, and her 2008 album, Laura's 2005 album tried too hard to add mainstream pop to the mix. The outcome was an album with some great composition, but many of the songs are overpowered by lackluster arrangement that tries to be "cool" but fails miserably. Negative criticism aside, the overall album is quite good and worth a download. The album starts off with the sleepy Raweq A'sabak and the overly poppy Shouq We Hira, instantly putting most listeners off. However, once you get past them, there are a couple songs in Laura's usual enjoyable style. Betthebbeni Aywa still tries to work in pop beats, but the strings and composition are more engaging than the first two tracks. Ya M'addeb El Re'yan is a great Lebanese dabke track, but although the strings, ney, and mizmar are present, the arranger unfortunately decided that overpowering the dabke beat with beatboxing and record-scratching would make the track interesting. Yah Ya Habibi is also a good song, with predominantly Egyptian-style arrangement, though the need to incorporate pop into the album creeps in here too. Ya Nasini, a remake, is in the vein of Raweq A'sabak, with nothing too interesting. The album ends with its two of its best tracks, Dah Yetla' Min and Rayeh Ala Fein. Dah Yetla' Min is composed by Tarek Abou Jaoudeh and arranged by Tony Saba, but the end result is a very Egyptian song, complete with a sha'bi-style mawal.


1. Raweq A'sabak
2. Shouq We Hira
3. Betthebbeni Aywa
4. Ya M'addeb El Re'yan
5. Yah Ya Habibi
6. Ya Nasini
7. Dah Yetla' Min
8. Rayeh Ala Fein

Download Here
256 Kbps + Covers

3 comments:

Mike said...

that's what i was talking about :p
thanks

Tabbouche said...

No problem, Mohamed, thanks for stopping by :).

enis.ch said...

Thank u for this album tabbouche. I think it's the best album of Laura. I'm not okay with you about the song "rawe2 a3sabak", it's true that the first time i listened to it, It seemed very sleeply, then I stopped listening to it. But since 2 or 3 years, I discovered again this song, and now I think it's one of the best songs of the album, not to say the best one, the mood of the song is so relaxing, the lyrics are original and laura sings performs it very well, adding to that that the song is composed by Ziad Boutros !