Jordanian producer Taymour teams up with Palestinian rapper/singer Bareetlblad for a killer mini-album of skewed gothic pop. »Nos Insan« is such a potent fusion of ideas that you wonder why no one tried it sooner. Billed as a break-up record, it’s dripping with intensity, finding fragile harmony between Future’s slow-burning emo-rap milestone »Hndrxx« and Martin Hannett’s moody canon. If that sounds odd, just imagine a pulverised version of Dean Blunt’s catalog: »Black Metal«-era songwriting, Hype Williams-era beatmaking and Babyfather’s plasticky rap commentary.

Haifa-based vocalist Bareetlblad is captivating on »Sort Akrhek, Ad Ma Ba7ebek« singing and rapping over Taymour’s beatless, chorus-heavy guitar loops. It’s a flawless opener, isolating a mood that’s potent and fully unique. There are no beats, just rain-soaked Vini Reilly-style shimmers over Bareetlblad’s soaring AutoTuned vox. The album title means »half a man«, a reference to a hollowed-out stretch following a breakup, referencing vintage grunge and shoegaze while at the same time scraping life-or-death imagery from traditional Arabic poetry and the region’s melancholy folk music.

Peep »T2ddamet«, a track that pulls on the interplay between Taymour’s ’80s Cure-style drum machine splashes and Bareetlblad’s melodramatic love-drunk rhymes, or the all-too-brief »Bdounik«, a minute and a half of washy industrial-cum-dreampop guitars over robotic, overdriven sweet nothings that sound as if they’re being broadcast through an empty mall on a busted tannoy. Best of all, »Msafreh« rounds things out with a euphoric gust of strums and a half-heard vocal that you’d more likely expect to find on one of Cocteau Twins’ late-period fantasies.