Staalplaat

MANSOUR, MOHAMED - Sweet Dreams

"Janet Erskine Stuart said that "Egypt was full of dreams, mysteries, memories". Her music, like her architecture is somehow hardwired into us, more than we know. When Oum Kalthoum was at her zenith, Egyptian music circled the world on shortwave, picked up and marveled over by millions who didn't understand a word she sang but understood the emotion in it. Something different might be said about an astonishing single by Mohamed Mansour, now issued by Staalplaat as a limited edition 7" single. Many will know the words on the first side, because they come from the Eurhythmics song "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This", its glorious, operatic line translated into Arabic as "Ahlamna el Helwa". When the Lebanese singer Mayssa Karaa re-recorded Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" in Arabic for the American Hustle soundtrack, many were reminded that the sheer beauty of the original song went beyond limitations of language. So, it is with Mansour's version of the Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox classic, a soaring line over a universal beat. To make the single doubly special, the flipside is Mansour's reworking of Woody Guthrie's "All You Fascists Bound To Lose", a song that had resonance when it was first performed but which seems ever more relevant today. Mansour's version is called "Hatehhsare", but its message remains the same: evil never prevails for long. Mansour's music is a compelling synthesis of European, American, and Egyptians styles and sounds. It is genuinely international. Just as shortwave radio fans used to twiddle dials to find Oum Kalthoum phasing up and down in the ether, so Mansour's music has a global presence on the internet, but how fine to have it in physical form too, in a beautifully designed sleeve by Staalplaat. Mo is a lyricist, vocalist and physicist from Egypt, Scotland and Kuwait, who has never worked on the 1st of May. Hand screen-printed cover in black and gold, hand sewn." - Staalplaat .
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After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
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