Basma and Temir Alcy's NAD: A Dark, Sultry Album for the Clock Change

Stroom has released NAD, an 11-track album from French-Moroccan vocalist Basma and Paris-based group Temir Alcy, timed — as the Guardian's review notes — "just in time for the changing of the clocks." The Guardian's four-star assessment calls it "a dark and disorientating listen, exploring themes of loss and new beginnings over swampy, downtempo rhythms."

What does the album actually sound like?

The record lingers between three reference points: folk, shoegaze (the hazy, effects-drenched guitar style born in the late 1980s) and ambient music. The texture is consistent across the 11 tracks — skulking percussion, droning passages and plucked strings soaked in reverb.

The opening track, Belati, sets the template. It's a spacious, shapeshifting composition where ghostly drones and Basma's layered calls give way to a sluggish beat. Most of the album follows what the Guardian describes as a similar "non-structure": amorphous but with an intermittent, sultry groove. You hear it in the winding bass of Khti Sarah and the slow, swinging rhythm of Aji M3aya.

How does Basma's voice carry it?

Her performance is, in the reviewer's word, "always captivating." She sings in a mixture of Darija (vernacular Moroccan Arabic) and French, delivering poetic snapshots built from sensory images that chime with the shifting seasons: "shy light," blowing wind and bonfires.

The vocal treatments vary track by track:

• On Rised, breathy fragments are looped and reversed into a dreamy haze.
• On La Tourne, her lilting chants produce a hypnotic effect.
• On the standout Al Atlal, which the review says "lumbers along like a haunted lullaby," she drifts between soft wails and stoic spoken word.

Why it works as a seasonal record

The mechanism here is tension. The album pairs loss with new beginnings, darkness with groove, and never resolves the contradiction — the Guardian credits it with "stoking a captivating sense of tension." That's what makes it a record for late October rather than midsummer: it mirrors a moment when light is visibly retreating.

The review's verdict frames the crew as "skulking" and "sultry," evoking the shifting season without resorting to mood music clichés. Al Atlal stands out as the emotional centre.

Whether NAD pushes beyond that mood into wider recognition will depend on listeners' patience with its amorphous structures — but as a portrait of a season turning, it does its job.