Mohamed Bourouissa - LILA Mohamed Bourouissa

Critically acclaimed photographer, Paris-based Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa has long fostered a deep, enveloping interest in sound. 'LILA' is his solo debut, a self-styled "musical object" that inventories the important relationships in his life; each of the album's tracks is dedicated to (and named after) a person he was thinking about as he composed the record. Featuring appearances from Franco-Senegalese artist Le Diouck and Italian avant-garde figure Valentina Fanigliulo (aka Mushy and Phantom Love), the album plays like a diary of hypnagogic reflections that uses weightless synths, heartbroken AutoTuned vocals and dissociated beat sequences to sketch a likeness of Bourouissa’s inner reality. Emotionally charged and rooted in the aesthetics Bourouissa pegs to his bonds with sound, people and art, it's as complex and multi-layered as any of his celebrated installations or exhibitions.

Bourouissa's first recognizable sonic reference was 2009's 'Temps Morts', a moving video work he named after French rapper Booba’s iconic debut album, and since then, he has followed his intuition, slowly figuring out not just how to integrate sound into his works, but how to center it. In 2017, he worked alongside Lebanese free improv guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui and Sina Araghi (aka Sina XX) on 'Si Di Kubi', a compilation that highlighted experimental sounds from the Arab world, and his course became clear. "It was at that moment that sound became an integral part of my artistic practice," he explains. Bourouissa collaborated with French sound designer and programmer Jordan Quiqueret in 2021 to figure out how to translate frequencies generated by the Acacia tree into rhythms on ‚Brutal Family Roots', integrating poetry from Waddi Waddi rapper MC Kronic and Egyptian-Australian MC Nardean. And he later worked with Fanigliulo on Haral!, a duo project that finally gave the artist the confidence to embrace his abilities and prioritize his own productions.

Even his recent Palais de Tokyo exhibition 'SIGNAL', Bourouissa's first retrospective, was assembled much like an album, with the artist paying close attention to the musical logic of its structure and inherent rhythms. "I see sound as a vector of history and memory, sometimes traumatic" he says. "Working with frequencies, noises and breaths opens up a space for reparation, a cathartic possibility.“And that same philosophy guides 'LILA', from the reverberating piano chords and choral echoes of 'INTRO' to the microtonal hums and obscured rhythms that spiral around the brief, affecting 'OUTRO'. It's an album that's hard to classify; there are traces of pop in 'HFC', a beatless suite of modular hiccups and bio-mechanical cries that oozes towards cacophony, and remnants of club music left on the windows and walls of the sweaty 'MG', in the quivering drum rolls and Le Diouck's pitchy exclamations.

The linking thread throughout is the fact that Bourouissa is able to represent a feeling rather than a sound. Using a palette that's been steadily refined over the last decade, he shifts and shimmers through a personal landscape that’s transformed into a living, breathing sonic ecosystem. On 'AF', haunted FM arpeggios float eerily around his casual, heartfelt words, and on the unsettling 'SEUM', layered synth drones counter his processed croons with electrifying xenharmonic chords. Instrumental vapors hover through tense rhythmic flurries on 'MN', and when Fanigliulo appears on the title track, the album snaps into focus as warm, hopeful pads underpin some of Bourouissa's most piercing lyrics. "What did you say, why should I cry," he repeats into the void, squeezing the words through metallic distortion and uneven beats. It's music that's so tactile that you can almost touch it.