As physical media continues its comeback, The National rounds up the best releases this month across film, music, art and more.
Sweet Rebels: The Golden Age of Algerian Pop-Rai
Born in Oran, a port city in Algeria, Rai music grew from a folk movement into the defining pop sound of the country in the late 20th century. It gave rise to major stars and fueled an active cassette culture and a passionate fan base who went wild for the electro-funk style.
And while most of those cassettes are now hard to come by if you're not scouring record shops in Algeria, that sound has aged to perfection in the current era, making it ripe for rediscovery. Thankfully, Wewantsounds has enlisted DJ Cheb Gero to curate several cult tracks into a new compilation – with most of the songs in vinyl for the first time – that will undoubtedly be the sound of my summer.
William Mullally, arts and culture editor
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nigerian writer and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a decorated fiction and non-fiction writer. This month, she is releasing Dream Count, her first novel since Americanah in 2013; her 2024 collection of essays, We Should All Be Feminists, is a book I have returned to countless times.
Dream Count follows the lives of four Nigerian women and explores themes of love, longing and self-discovery. I am yet to read it – my copy should land on my doorstep on March 4 – but in reviews, it’s been described as reading like “a feminist War and Peace”.
Farah Andrews, head of features
Motor City Is Burning - A Michigan Anthology 1965-1972
As a city whose social and cultural currents have shaped American popular music, Detroit’s influence has been explored in many seminal genre compilations, including Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959–1971 and Grit, Noise & Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Punk, 1975–1985.
The new collection, Motor City Is Burning – A Michigan Anthology 1965–1972, makes a valiant attempt to weave these eclectic musical strands into a cohesive narrative of a sonically charged city in creative overdrive.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Detroit’s musical explosion illuminated a new generation of artists and bold reinventions of established genres – including garage rock, proto-punk, Motown soul and psychedelic funk. These creative leaps are across the three CD box set featuring 66 tracks and spanning four hours.
They range from the punk frenzy of The Stooges’ 1969 self-titled debut album to MC5’s Teenage Lust and the high-concept soul of The Temptations’ Ball of Confusion. Many of the city’s revered names are also in the mix, including blues maestro John Lee Hooker, rocker Alice Cooper, as well as Grand Funk Railroad. An accompanying 48-page booklet – featuring rare photos and behind-the-scenes anecdotes – elevates this release beyond mere nostalgia, making it an essential document for understanding a creatively fertile period in American music history.
Saeed Saeed, features writer
I am Kurdish - Mohammad Syfkhan
Syrian-Kurdish musician Mohammad Syfkhan began learning the bouzouki in 1980, when he was in nursing school in Aleppo.
He moved to the city of Raqqa after graduating and soon formed Al Rabie Band, performing in weddings and concerts across Syria. His repertoire featured Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish music. Syfkhan left Syria in 2014, months after one of his sons was murdered by ISIS. While the rest of Syfkhan’s sons attained asylum status in Germany, he resettled in Ireland, along with his wife and daughter.
Since then, Syfkhan has become a regular in the Irish music scene, collaborating with artists such as Martin Hayes and Cormac Begley. In 2023, he opened for the contemporary Irish folk band Lankum at the Cork Opera House.
Syfkhan released his debut album, I Am Kurdish, in February last year. The album is now being re-released on vinyl. The eight tracks on the album are underscored by the atmosphere of mirth that Syfkhan has become renowned for, offering joyful listening as much as it can spur people to dance.
Razmig Bedirian, features writer
Kin-dza-dza! in Blu-ray
Science fiction and the former Soviet Union have an interesting relationship. Take, for example, one of the fathers of modern sci-fi, Isaac Asimov, who was born in Russia in 1920. His literature spurned generations of writers to go forth and explore the future. The Soviet Union also had an accomplished space programme, having beaten the US twice with the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space and the first satellite launch, Sputnik.
It is no coincidence then that great sci-fi films would come from the bloc. Films such as Stalker and Solaris from Andrei Tarkovsky have been adored and celebrated by fans. There is another, lesser-known film that I am interested in. Kin-dza-dza! by Georgiy Daneliya was released in 1986 and tells the story of two Russians who accidently press a button on a peculiar object and end up being transported to an alien planet with bizarre societal norms.
The film has always been mentioned by cinephiles as being one of the great cinematic exports from the Soviet Union, and with a new Blu-ray release from Deaf Crocodile Films on March 11, I can finally enjoy it at home.
Faisal Al Zaabi, gaming and social media writer
A Boy Named Goo - Goo Goo Dolls
Despite being defined by their seminal hit, Iris, a song written by frontman John Rzeznik for the 1998 tear-jerker City of Angels, New York rockers Goo Goo Dolls now have 13 albums to their name. But it was with their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo, released in 1995, that the band found their first mainstream success.
A Boy Named Goo turns 30 in March, and the band is releasing a special deluxe edition, in vinyl and CD, featuring the original album as well as an unreleased live concert performance recorded in Las Vegas in 1996.
The 13 tracks include the hit, Name, considered their breakthrough single, as well as Long Way Down, Naked and Only One. The vinyls come in two colours – sea blue and black.
Fun fact: after the album’s release, the band’s label Warner Bros accused retailer Walmart of removing the album from shop shelves after customers had allegedly complained about the cover art, which showed a baby smeared with blackberry juice. Customers were upset because they mistook the blackberry juice for blood and thought it implied child abuse, Warner Bros claimed. Walmart denied the claim and said it removed the album due to poor sales.
David Tusing, assistant features editor
Unusual Fragments: Japanese Stories
Japanese literature is experiencing a boom internationally at the moment, with even mid-20th-century luminaries such as Kenzaburo Oe, Yukio Mishima and Kobo Abe experiencing a resurgence in popularity. But there are still several fascinating and unique voices that are yet to be discovered – many of whom editor Sarah Coolidge has collected into this new compilation from Two Lines Press.
Do you like your short fiction strange, funny and a bit otherworldly? You'll find much to enjoy here, including stories about a young storm-chaser who welcomes a jaded woman into the eye of a storm, a medical student coolly observing an adolescent boy contorting his body into violent positions, and an implausibly tiny man attending a Mozart opera with his wife. For the uninitiated, take this as a sampler that will open your eyes to a rich and fascinating world.
William Mullally, arts and culture editor
