Sleaford Mods band. Glasgow, United Kingdom. 2014/Redferns via Getty Images
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
If any group today embodies the ancient street spirit of Britain with its aggression, debauchery, and overall human variability, it is the Nottingham post-punk duo Sleaford Mods. They create astonishingly monotonous yet wildly lively, captivating, and instantly recognizable music – best characterized by the Nabokovian term 'bezfintiflyushchny' for their recitative-dialect style. These dissectors of words and rhythms, of course, couldn’t pass on the Arabic themes so crucial to their homeland."