Showcase: YUNIS @ Balades Sonores

A CINEMATIC VOYAGE THROUGH COSMIC RITUAL AND ETERNAL SOUND

Egyptian composer YUNIS’ Ninety Nine Eyes is a work that exists outside time—equally at home in the temples of antiquity and the neon-lit voids of speculative futures. This double-sided LP (Part I and Part II, 15:14 / 16:03) merges ceremonial percussion, interstellar synthwaves, and wordless incantations into a 31-minute ritual for the infinite.

Born from a three-year metamorphosis between studio and stage, and rooted in a Takhmira (a Zar ritual poem), Ninety Nine Eyes channels the archetypal quest—a search for the “land where light is seated.” Its soundscapes evoke the grandeur of forgotten civilizations and the hum of celestial machinery: droning mizmar lines and drowning tombak and duff rhythms dissolve into maximalist synth storms; choirs of phantom voices rise like starlight through the static of ages.

Structured like a Sufi Hadra, the LP’s undulating peaks pull at old ways of communing with the divine—Part I builds tension, a breath before the storm, while Part II erupts into unfettered synth-drenched trance, gates flung open—only the listener can close the circle through their own interpretation.

الأرض دي اللي كرسيها نور بتوجد فين؟