For a producer fascinated by the sound of ’70s soul records, Tunisia’s Khadija al Hanafi crafts footwork albums that distinctly reflect the fragmented feeling of being alive and online in the present. !OK!, the feature-length follow-up to her twin Slime Patrol tapes, uses its extended runtime to intensify al Hanafi’s already hyperactive sequencing, simulating the trance-like sensation of locking into an endless vertical scroll. Maintaining a steady 160 bpm pulse, she speeds through 20 tracks in just over 34 minutes, eschewing club music’s traditional build-ups and cooldowns to chain climax after climax. Even compared to the madcap sampledelia of her earlier work, !OK! is a constant stream of stimulation, pouncing on each opportunity to fuse a new, strange combination of samples from al Hanafi’s deep crates.
Al Hanafi’s debut bears the influence of trips she’d take to France to visit her aunt, who lived above a record store. Because al Hanafi didn’t own a turntable, she developed a roundabout sample-hunting method, snapping photos of cool-looking LPs to listen to on her phone later. The sound of Slime Patrol reflects this exchange between physical and digital worlds. Muffled mixing and jazzy instrumentation evoke the feeling of dropping the needle on a rare slab, while her affection for Atlanta trap a capellas and Nintendo DS soundtracks fold in her childhood fixations. Much of the appeal of Slime Patrol stemmed from this time-warping, and while the stylish retrofuturism remains intact on !OK!, al Hanafi uses it as a foundation for greater compositional experimentation. She flickers the volume of melodies on and off to conjure sensations of weightlessness on tracks like “Roll Up (Lemme Show You)” and “Miss Him (Ma Baby).” A surprising use of jungle breaks makes “Borders” an exuberant experience. The bleeping, ringtone-era synth work on “Bounce It on the Flo” cuts through the mix to signal that al Hanafi’s taking a stab at juke traditionalism for two minutes of pure adrenaline. Each transition between tracks is a new opportunity to catch listeners completely off guard.
On “Bad Bitch on Your Side,” al Hanafi uses soft 808 tom drums to glue disparate yet surprisingly complementary pieces together. Vivisected bits of electric keyboard overlap to form impressionistic clusters of harmony. Two vocal samples—a line sourced from Nicki Minaj’s Call of Duty: Warzone skin and a pitched-up excerpt from the late Unk’s “Walk It Out”—converse over the elegant backdrop, creating an atmosphere that’s both bratty and baroque. The track is conducive to frenetic dancing, but it’s just as suitable for falling back onto the sofa as rippling arpeggios permeate the room. Al Hanafi’s use of starkly contrasting layers makes each listen feel like staring at a magic eye puzzle: just shifting your focus between frequencies can ratchet up the adrenaline or help you unwind.
