A personal view of their own, foreign culture - "Wameedd" is an album with many musical facets. Eleven poems in Arabic, all of them reworked in the right tone and the correct mood. In the centre stands Kamilya Jubran's voice. In the tradition of Arabian songs, Jubran plays with the individual words and syllables of the Arabic text. She delays, accelerates and swaps around the sound colours. Each note struggles for independence and autonomy - a long way from simplified Orientalism. Werner Hasler enmeshes Jubran's voice in each song with new sound colours and without ever bringing them to the foreground. His sounds are generated using an analogue synthesizer and samples he recorded himself. Hasler's sounds and frequencies swap between the left and the right speakers, holding up the tempo and polyrhythmically playing with the song. Hasler, the trumpeter, knows exactly how to support the voice's melody. Occasionally, he attacks it, leaving it to return swiftly to the background. On other occasions, he almost drags the music into "Dance floor": he creates tension, and then dives back behind Jubran's voice; he has complete trust in Jubran's voice and in the strength of the intimate, minimalist musical mix. Throughout the CD, Hasler the differentiating sound artist remains in the background. Even the Arabian Oud is used very softly. Only in the more recent compositions, in "Al-Mawjatu Taa't" or "Ankamishu", does Jubran's Oud playing come into the foreground as a leading instrument. As a result, the music seems to have a stronger, more individual personality. Dynamic with many sharps and flats yet conservative in its basic sounds, played in detail and in intermediate sounds, the music is both minimalist and full of colour, whilst always being focused on the text. "Wameedd" shows that the musicians are not caught up in their culture, but that they are more or less influenced by it. Musicians look to their local and global environment for inspiration and musical partners and so, ideally, create a music that has a lot to do with the world, whilst also having a lot in common with the musicians themselves.