
The information boom of the last 15 years has given people a thirst for crate digging. What started on illicit pirate blogs has blossomed into a healthy industry of re-issue labels, and still, the race is on, to find the dustiest, mustiest rarity that no one has ever heard.
Captured Tracks are drawing ahead of the pack, with their Shoegaze Archive series and now the Fantasy Memory imprint, curated by the seasoned vinyl archaeologist Andy Grier, of Thieves Like Us.
This binge of eclectic listening has opened our ears to totally unknown movements like European coldwave, minimal synthesis, mutant disco, funk, and every permutation of world music. In this rich and ripe polycultural climate, perhaps we are finally ready to receive the worldbeat exoticism of Saâda Bonaire.
Even after 15 years of listening to absolutely everything, Saâda Bonaire are entirely eclectic. The project began at a club night in Bremen as a pop-art project between DJ Ralph"“von" Richtoven and two vocalists, Stephanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld. Inspired by the cross-cultural fusion of Afro-Caribbean music in America, and Rai and West African music in France, Saâda Bonaire sought to combine underground dance sounds of its day, 1982, with their own local flavor, Turkish and Kurdish folk music. They recorded the lead single, "You Can Be All That You Are", which combines brittle synthpop and slippery digital funk with Middle Eastern instruments and detached, incantatory vocals. It's a stone-eyed groove, perfect to transfix the intercontinental, and all was going well. Unfortunately, it was the only single the band would record. Their A&R man for EMI had a reputation for going over budget, had spent five times his allotment on Tina Turner's
Private Dancer, and was already three times overspent with Saâda Bonaire. EMI put out "You Can Be As You Are" b/w "Invitation" and pulled the plug, and the rest is history.