DATE & TIME
Friday, April 24, 2026 - 11 PM
VENUE
Flex Café
Danube Canal, Exit Augarten Bridge, 1010 Vienna
flex.at
TICKETS
The Denmark-based Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef has already created whole new worlds of sound. His startling debut as AMMAR 808 – 2018’s Maghreb United – fused thumping TR-808 drum machine rhythms and bone-rattling bass with traditional North African folk instrumentalists and vocalists from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, suggesting a pan-Maghreb science-fiction mash-up.
With his new album Club Tounsi, he sets his sights on home, with an album that investigates and explores the vibrant folk tradition of his native Tunisia. At the centre is Mezoued, a folk music named after the ancient goatskin bagpipes, which emerged in the 1950s as the music of the working class and migrants in Tunis. Long socially stigmatised, Mezoued brings together Sufi chants, malouf melodies, Arabic scales and old folk songs. The music speaks of the harshness of life and the pain of love and still wants above all one thing: to celebrate.
On Club Tounsi, AMMAR 808 rethinks this festive tradition for the 21st century: with pulsating basslines, shrill synthesizers and mechanical drum machine rhythms. “I want to grab energies from the past and project them to the future,” he says, “it's about making the bridge to the young generation who go clubbing, and for them to be able to hear something made in Tunisia, by Tunisia, for Tunisia and the world.”
