The central theme of redefining death—as travel, spiritually coded as struggle plus exaltation equaling transformation, then salvation—runs consistently throughout the record, only to tumble on its head when the ghost of Two Gospel Keys, with horrifying mockery, flips the final page.

This is the closest the mesh has come to brushing against the Hurufiyya movement. If conspiracy theories charged with the rhymical wit of a rapper who devours books and beats alike—hear him casually drop Don Quixote and Sheikh Imam in the same track—can ignite the spirits of the most forsaken people on earth as unstoppably as the greatest Arab rap album has done to this bag of bones, then so fucking be it.

Sheikh Imam embodied Negm’s colloquialisms so closely that one might debate who truly resembled whom. It is no small task for Saleh—who mirrors this resemblance with a voice matured to sound like a young Taher Mostafa—to revive their symbiosis through her renderings of Imam’s boyish adolescence and ad-libs. Yet she comes remarkably close. Paired with Zeid Hamdan’s wide-eyed sporadicity, she delivers what stands as the only complete attempt at an Arab Art Pop record of this century.

Without affecting a personal tone or intensity, S.E. Rogie administers good-humored cynicism to alleviate daily spoilers of happiness. Consequently, except for the last two tracks, it lacks conviction.

Not only has a sense of duty as a fellow Jordanian compelled me to buy this record, but it’s also unlikely he’ll deliver tracks with such consistent groove and musicality anytime soon. For now, Identity Crisis, with its orderly disorder, lives up to its title.

Melds of jazz and pop sensibilities—including rap-singing, electronic claps, and sound effects—come together far more cohesively than the blaccents flaunting their go-getter mentality. Fun, with a silly tweak, is reintroduced into contemporary jazz, paired with emotional and sexual openness, executed flawlessly.

Dubbed math rock, it functions as a pop album infused with classical altruism, which underscores its artificiality. It's defiant, yet benign, yet spirited. The features seem to honor the band, whose mastery of jazzy times and chord progressions impresses far beyond the Taiwanese musical scene and appears to reflect a broader national spirit.

Punk as a mere cultural commodity has given way to an intermediate Pop—a space that, given its specificity, exudes variety, from Rachid Taha to P!nk, down to this funky Punk that won’t make it as far.

Backboned by virtuoso musicianship rather than musicality, the satisfactions rather than thrills it fulfills are merely textural.