Album Review: Celt Islam - Acidanarchist (2021)

Sometimes when you follow an artist’s work closely for a decade or so, there is often a tendency to notice a subtle - or not so subtle - softening of that artist’s original sound. It might be due to compromises made on account of some sort of commercial breakthrough (often termed “selling out”), adapting to more recent musical trends, a change of environment, or simply a natural mellowing that comes with the irreversible passage of time. 

On Celt Islam’s latest release, Acidanarchist, the opposite applies. If anything, the UK-based electro dub maestro keeps ramping things up a notch (or seven) on each and every release – and there’s been a few releases. Celt Islam’s vibe just seems to get heavier and more hardcore each time out.

The Baghdad release (here) of some ten years ago was the album that first drew me into Celt Islam’s artistic vision. It was the perfect fusion of east meets west, an album which connected so many diverse global musical strands, and it appealed as a borderless, meditative blueprint for a better world. A couple of years later, as the Analogue Fakir, he released an IDM-geared album called Worlds We Know (here), which I absolutely loved, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can now view these early works through a slightly different lens … he was just getting started, still at the simmering stage, and slowly but steadily, over the course of the past decade, as world events descend into an almost farcical state, a cesspit of fakery, false information, and twisted narratives, Celt Islam has reached boiling point. Which is where we find him on Acidanarchist. 

As a Sufi Muslim based in Northern England, as a political activist and social justice campaigner, it is impossible for Celt Islam to separate his art from the environment or political climate in which it is made. That goes without saying. When forwarding the pre-release copy he noted … “this is a manifestation of our times, and where dance music needs to be, instead of the same carbon copy of everything boring, no depth, no meaning, void of any form of spirituality or real consciousness” … 

Or, anger is an energy, as someone else once claimed. Etc. And so we get drenched in a relentless high-bpm form of electronic punk (minimal vocal, often buried deeper in the mix), with track titles like ‘Vendetta’, ‘System Reset’, and ‘Resurgence’, progressively building in tempo to a reach a distinct DnB-style climax on closing tracks ‘Dominator’, and the majestic ‘Hikam’. 

And yet, for all of that forward pulsating electro momentum, my own favourite cut (of 13) is perhaps the most mellow of all, without being mellow at all … the Mark Iration collab, ‘Born As An African’ (“sufferer”), which for some reason taps into my love of On-U Sound/dub, and its bouncy swaggering skank would be absolutely begging for an Adrian Sherwood makeover if it wasn’t already near perfect in its current form. 

Other collaborators on Acidanarchist include Shahin Badar, who, amongst other things, is well known for her vocal work with The Prodigy (‘Smack’), Aki Nawaz (Fun-Da-Mental), and of course, regular and longtime Celt Islam collaborator Inder Goldfinger (percussionist extraordinaire, producer, TransGlobal Underground, far too many others to list). 

Acidanarchist will be released on 24 May, and can be found on the Earth City Recordz Bandcamp page (here).