Sa'iyr is here.. .'.

And arriving at people's houses.

This is the part I've been worried about.. responses so far have been extreme.. in one way or another.

Some people seem overjoyed about it, other seem to feel ripped off. eek!

Also kind of bummed about a few things:

• the lack of "Sa'iyr" in the title (don't get me started on that one again)
• the whole panel of technicoloured albums in the sleeve
• the little "publicity" paragraph on the back. Completely inaccurate - the text was written as the origin of the album, and in reference to the track "SomeEye", not the album as a whole. This also seems to be a sore spot for someone at amazon.com who gave the first rating at 1 fuckin star! :(
  
• a few people have questioned the middle-eastern connection. fair enough: no tracks were intended to sound middle eastern.
  BUT.. almost every track contains rhythms, structures and permutations that originated in the middle east.
  The whole point originally was: people have been making music using Middle-Eastern _samples_ for ages, aim for a reinterpretation of old ideas in the "pentaphobe style". In fact, the idea was to steer clear of the "arabic electronic music" genre entirely, or any other "world electronica" (there are plenty of people doing that with far more raw resources than I have)

I guess the problem people are having is: Imagine you were hoping to get an acid-jazz CD (may ye burne in helle) but instead got Squarepusher.

That is no doubt the feeling that someone looking for "bellydance music" or "arabic pop" is going to get when they buy Sa'iyr.

bummer dude.