Paradise Now

The stomach belongs to Algerian Manel Filali, the Arab half of Milk & Honey, who has the coffee-coloured skin, chocolate brown eyes and luscious black hair to prove it. The other half of the Germany-based pop duo is Anne Ross, a local girl with her own blonde-haired-blue-eyed regional characteristics. Both former members of forgettable and oddly-named girl group The Preluders, they were united in racial harmony by producer HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Fahrenkrog-Petersen"Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, whose sounds like he has a moustache the length of the Rhine. They have just released “Seven Seconds”, their third single from debut album, Elbi, which follows on from debut smash “Habibi”, that stayed on the German charts for three months, and the aforementioned “Didi”, an English-language, sugared-up cover of Cheb Khaled’s classic.

Anne: We met when I was in the studio recording some new songs with my old band, this was about five years ago. Manel was part of the producer team and we liked each other from the start. We became good friends and after my old band split we started traveling a lot and spent much time together. Just for fun, we wrote some songs and went into studio and it sounded really good. So we thought: hey, we have so much fun making music together and are such good friends, let’s start something.

 

Manel: Well, Anne and I are so different: she is blond, I’m brown; we are from different cultures; we have different religions and so on. So we decided to find our common point and we found it in the Koran and in the Bible. In both religions they talk about the land of milk and honey, the paradise. That’s where it came from.

 

Anne: First we went to Dubai, and that’s where we first heard the music of a band called Miami. We were so impressed by those songs because it was a new style of music, very different from everything else that was around. A few weeks later, we were actually invited by the group’s singer Khaled to Kuwait. From this trip we became so inspired and influenced by the culture and music that we decided to maybe do some singing in Arabic, too, and integrate more and more traditional Arabic instruments and beats in our songs.

 

Anne: It has to be “Ana ahebak” – that’s my favourite expression in any language!

 

Manel: We don’t have a strategic master plan, to be honest! We are just doing what we love to do, which is making music. We are currently working on some new songs that will be released as “featurings” – basically collaborations with other prominent artists in those countries and territories where we are releasing our album. And as part of that we are also thinking about doing a “featuring” with a famous Arabic artist. We will work hard and have fun with our music and our fans, and of course come for some more concerts!

 

Anne: It’s really amazing where they all come from. Of course, we have a lot of fans in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but we are getting so many e-mails and letters from all over the world. The first two videos each managed to rack up 1.5 million views on You Tube, and the comments come from all over the world – from South America, Asia , the US, all of the Arab countries. We are excited about that international response to our music.

 

Manel: Ha ha! I must admit that this question is very funny. But, sorry, I am not going to tell you! 




Anne: For me it’s not that he has to have a great body or brown hair or a cute nose or something like that. It has to be the right feeling, a special something, when I meet somebody.

 

Manel und Anne: Sure we are definitely coming back as soon as possible!

 

For the full version of this article, see NOX 21.