Prototype Ensemble Features Bernier, Lafortune, and Schulrabe

The tenth recorded output from Montreal-based saxophonist Mehdi Nabti since 2012 arrives under the title Mixmodes. The compositional framework utilizes a specific set of technical inputs, North African folklore, contemporary jazz, and geomancy, to generate its rhythms and improvisational structures.

Title: Mixmodes
Artist: Mehdi Nabti Prototype
Release Date: 2025-08-22
Genres: Avant-garde, Jazz, World Fusion
Label: self-release
Description: Montreal's Mehdi Nabti releases Mixmodes with Prototype. The album integrates North African rhythms and post-bop jazz via instinctive composition.

Nabti retains the Prototype quartet formation for this release, featuring Philippe Bernier on electric guitar, Nicolas Lafortune on electric bass, and Bertil Schulrabe on drums. This unit has been his primary vehicle since 2018’s Les règles de l’Art (ethno-engineering). Unlike earlier points in his catalogue, which frequently employed conventional North African instrumentation such as the oud or derbuka, recent work locates these cultural markers within the harmonic and rhythmic fabric of the composition itself.

Mehdi Nabti is a scholar and musician of Kabyle descent, originally from Paris. He holds a doctorate in anthropology from EHESS Paris, following extensive fieldwork between 2003 and 2008 into Moroccan Sufi trance rituals, including Aissawa and Hamadcha traditions. His musical methodology, which he terms the “Afro-Berber continuum,” integrates these rhythmic studies with post-bop structures learned under instructors such as Steve Coleman and François Jeanneau.

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