Yazz Ahmed

Miles Davis’ “Générique” floats in like he was blowing fog through his trumpet.

It’s a surreal, beautiful, late-night ode to the night itself and all its pain and delight. To stretch that feeling over an entire album, rather than three minutes, would be a Herculean task of skill and restraint. And yet, La Saboteuse exists.

Yazz Ahmed’s document of psychedelic, Bahraini-inspired Jazz feels and sounds like nothing else in its genre. In a decade that saw Jazz reborn and reimagined through the fertile chaos of Hip-hop, Minimalism, Afrobeat, Caribbean swing and Cuban rhythms, Ahmed crafted a myth of dream-like quality. So hear our interview with Yazz, read our thoughts on her work and see why it’s the best of the 10s.

“[Psychedelic music] means losing your mind, being totally captured by the music, going into a dream like state. ”

— Yazz Ahmed