Acid Arab (en live)

For more than ten years, Acid Arab has been building one of the most distinctive sounds on the French electronic music scene. Born in the Paris of clubs, diasporas and cultural exchange, the collective has invented a musical territory where machines converse with voices, modes, rhythms and imaginaries from the Arab world, the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. Since its first releases on Versatile, followed by the albums Musique de France, Jdid and ٣ / Trois on Crammed Discs, Acid Arab has established an immediately recognizable aesthetic: powerful, physical and precise electronic music, infused with trance forms, folk songs, percussion, acid lines and melodies from elsewhere. The collective's music is based on a simple idea: bringing machines and the musical sources it draws on together with equal intensity, in a shared language designed for the club, the stage and listening. This approach quickly gave the project an international dimension. With more than 600 dates around the world over ten years, Acid Arab has traveled from influential clubs to major festivals, from Rex Club to Nuits Sonores, from KOKO and Fabric in London to Fusion Festival, via Ibiza Cova Santa, the Eurockéennes de Belfort and numerous venues in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, the Americas and Asia. On stage, the collective unleashes an energy that is both direct and hypnotic, capable of bringing very different audiences together around the same movement. Acid Arab's journey has always been built through encounters. Some voices have become landmarks in its universe, such as Sofiane Saidi, present from the collective's earliest major chapters and returning to accompany several key moments in its repertoire. Other collaborations have opened up new directions: Yasmine Hamdan, a major figure in the contemporary Arab scene, extends with Resonance a dialogue begun several years earlier; Wael Alkak brings a percussive and committed intensity from Syria; Ghizlane Melih connects the memory of Moroccan music with a contemporary electronic sensibility. With Cem Yıldız, Acid Arab found a natural point of contact with Turkish traditions and trance forms, while Cheba Ibtissem, Ghita Lahmamassi, Radia Manel, Zeina Aftimos, Dalia, Rita L’Oujdia and Cheikha Hadjla further expand this vocal map. This musical geography is not merely an accumulation of guests: it lies at the heart of Acid Arab's essence. Each collaboration slightly shifts the project's center, adding a language, a color, a tension and a different way of inhabiting dance. This enables the collective to move from a track led by a major contemporary Arab voice to a more pop encounter with Edis on Yaktın Beni, or to a more cinematic presence with Najwa Nimri, without losing its identity. Acid Arab remains the point of convergence: a space where voices circulate, respond to one another and become electronic matter. At the same time, the project engages in dialogue with several generations of producers and remixers. R3HAB, Yuksek, Chloé Caillet, KiNK, NTO and LB aka LABAT have each extended Acid Arab's universe toward other scenes, between house, techno, indie dance and French club culture. The collective has also revisited Barbès by Rachid Taha, an essential reference in Franco-Algerian music, as an act of lineage as much as transmission. With its upcoming album Resonance, Acid Arab opens a new chapter. The record extends the collective's founding obsessions—dance, trance, voices, sonic precision and encounters—while asserting a broader and more contemporary form of writing. For the first time, the production is enriched by an outside perspective, bringing new depth to the sound and the work on textures. Surrounded by its many guests, Resonance presents an Acid Arab in motion, faithful to its language yet open to new dimensions. In 2026, Acid Arab crosses a new frontier with the soundtrack for the Hassan Hajjaj exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris. This encounter with Hassan Hajjaj's visual universe naturally extends the collective's approach: bringing images, bodies, popular cultures, icons and music into dialogue within the same living space. It accompanies a significant period for Acid Arab, between new collaborations, international stages and the prospect of an upcoming Zénith de Paris show. Acid Arab is now a rare project: a French electronic collective that is simultaneously club-oriented, live, cultural and international; music of celebration, rootedness and movement, which does not seek to illustrate a world but to make it resonate.