“Sahari Köd” draws on a Chadian musical tradition so rarely heard outside its region of origin that AfrotroniX describes it as entirely untapped. That rarity is audible from the first bar. The third cut on KÖD, released 16 January, it sits at the centre of what Chadian guitarist and producer Caleb Rimtobaye has spent a decade building from Montreal: deep house architecture pulled and restrung until it holds the specific weight of Sahelian rhythm, Sara vocal textures fed into digital systems and returned as what he calls “the voice of an African robot.”

The lyrics work as invocation, wind, mountain strength, natural force, and they connect directly to the album’s core logic. KÖD takes its title from the Sara word for the talking drum, one of humanity’s earliest systems for transmitting meaning across distance. Rhythm as language, sound as data, drum as transmitter. “Sahari Köd” runs that same current through the voice: something preserved on worn cassette, now inside a machine, coming back changed but unmistakably Chadian.

Raised in N’Djamena amid the Sara, Gourane and Arabic musical communities, decorated by the French Republic as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and present on over 130 stages worldwide, Rimtobaye has built KÖD with collaborators from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Congo and Canada. Chad’s musical traditions have rarely travelled this far.

Listen to “Sahari Köd” HERE and get your copy of KÖD following THIS LINK