Eddisco Records: the Tunis record shop that became a label

For years, looking for a record in Tunis meant looking for someone who owned one. The shops closed in the early 2000s and nothing replaced them. Eddisco opened in 2018 in one room of a Lafayette apartment, by appointment, with cardboard crates and a mural painted straight onto the wall. Two years later the same address became a label. Eleven releases on, it has moved to rue d'Autriche, a few steps away.

Before the shop, a crew

The story starts in 2013 with Downtown Vibes, the collective built by DJ and producer Hamdi Ryder and his partner Aymen Ghannoudi. House music, crate digging, and street culture, breakdance and graffiti, taken on as part of the scenery. Downtown Vibes nights brought over Folamour, Terrence Parker, Dan Shake, Byron the Aquarius, Marcel Vogel, Demuja and Paul Cut. Alongside them, Secret Vibes happened in locations kept secret until the last moment, Downtown Selectors gathered the diggers at Habibi, and Wax Day set up a vinyl market where records were bought, sold and traded. For its eighth birthday, in December 2021, the collective put Chicago house legend Robert Owens on at 117 Gammarth, with Bedoui and Ferta.

Hamdi Ryder grew up in 1990s downtown Tunis, on Fairuz, jazz and blues, then hip hop. Digging for samples from 2008 onwards is what led him to house. Active since the early 2010s, he has played across Europe and at the major festivals in Tunisia and the MENA region, and has spoken at the International Music Summit as an artist, label owner and promoter. The rest follows from that: the shop is not a shopkeeper's idea, it is what a collector's habit turns into.

2018: one room in Lafayette

Eddisco opened in 2018, inside an apartment in the Lafayette district. No window display, no opening hours: you book. In April 2019 The Vinyl Factory placed it at number 146 in its series on the world's best record shops, a series that picks one shop per city, and described it for what it was: the only record shop in the country, run by a collective, built around club music but open to hip hop, jazz, disco and Tunisian and Arabic records. Hamdi Ryder summed up the intention in one line: a place where people gather, listen to tracks, discover music and share conversations. He added the part that explains the rest: local culture is not short of ideas, it is short of the means to sustain itself, so the shop works as a meeting point.

The mural says the same thing: Secret Vibes flyers, Wax Day flyers, a Subwax BCN x Downtown Vibes night, painted onto the wall and framed by hand.

2020: the label

Eddisco Records started in 2020, with a line written plainly into its own sleeve notes: to weave a collective discography that reflects a Tunisian and North African identity while leaving each artist their own voice, and to hand the result to the common heritage of electronic music.

The first release, T.U.G.S (June 2020), is a Hamdi Ryder record with a freestyle by Amyne that moves between Tunisian and English, recorded at Rec & Roll Studio, and a remix by Orlando Voorn, one of the most inventive producers in the Netherlands. Four tracks, artwork by Va Jo, mastering by Tema. The sleeve note sets the terms: a tribute to Tunisia's street spirit in the international language of house music.

Then came Cyber Dream by Henkeman, the stage name of Tunisian producer Ghazouani Khalil (October 2020): three breaky, housey tracks, French spoken word, arpeggios and an acid line, with a Hamdi Ryder remix that adds analogue distortion, CD skips and 808s, artwork by Nyzar Trabelsi. Then Diaries of the XTNDD (April 2021), which Hamdi Ryder describes as his own life cycle, swinging between quiet rides through his Lafayette neighbourhood, which give the bonus track "Lafayette Ride", and the energy of the dancefloor, which gives "Afterparty Echoes". And, in July 2021, a tribute to Cheb Terro, one of the rawest voices in Tunisian rap, who had died two months earlier: a remix of "Pink Magic", by Terro and Ratchopper, already recorded, released afterwards as a goodbye.

In January 2021, with the clubs shut, the label launched Eddisco FM, a live streaming series running twice a month with Hamdi Ryder, HearThug, Nuri and then Pan-J. Viewer donations were split between the artists, to keep the scene going without a dancefloor. The house also runs a podcast series on its SoundCloud; number 06 is by Bedoui.

The DJ Friendly Edits

A separate series, and a telling one: North African heritage reworked for the turntables, Bandcamp only.

#1 is Hamdi Ryder's edit of "Laaroubi" by rai legend Cheb Sahraoui, after an earlier pass at Ahmed Fakroun's "Nisyan". #2 goes to Khemir, who turns Malik Adouane's "N'touma" into an italo disco record without stripping out its rai and sufi spirit. The story behind that choice is worth the record: Malik Adouane was one of the first, if not the first, to mix rai with house, in 1980s New York, after hearing Mark Kamins play the Algerian national anthem in a house set; the two ended up working together on the album After Rai, where "N'touma" came from. #3 is the most personal: "Dance", a rare disco cut by the Tunisian Corniche Band, a group led by Hamdi Ryder's uncle, who caught in their own way the 1980s disco wave as it reached the Tunisian coast.

Eddiscology

Eddiscology Vol.1 landed in April 2022: seven Tunisian producers, seven routes through deep house, hip hop, electro and acid house, from Don Pynno, Pan-J, Hamdi Ryder (with rapper Amyne on "Bounce Back"), Ahmet Mecnun, Unveiled, Khalil Lajmi and Khemir. Artwork by Salma Remadi, mastering by Tema. The stated aim was to build a futuristic Tunisian sound, an alternative space for local experiments, rather than export a postcard.

Eddiscology Vol.2 followed in November 2024 and widened the map, from Tunis to Beirut: ANNUN opens on "Stargazing", Moncef Sounds crosses minimal house with disco samples, Hamdi Ryder pushes the tempo on "Rewind Selecta", Nesta stays deep, Khemir and Mood close on tech house. Six tracks, five producers plus the label's co-founder.

The catalogue today

The pace has not dropped since. Offbeat Dreams (March 2024) is the EP where Hamdi Ryder crosses speed garage, Italian dream house and deep house: "Footprints on the Moon" for the energy, "Any Love" for the groove, "First Blush" for daybreak. Artwork by Aroussi Tabbena, mastering by Rob Small. Break The Record / Raver Tales (May 2025) is two tracks, one for peak time, one breakier and later in the night. Breezy (December 2025) adds four more, including "Whale Dubs", dreamy pads over a garage beat, and "Alaize" with FIN, acid and broken.

In August 2026, EDDS011 paired Khemir with Space 909 on a four-track split, Resistance / You Must Be Saved. Khemir builds "Resistance" around a snippet from a radio interview with Tunisian rapper Vipa, then goes acid on "For The Club"; Space 909 makes his label debut with "You Must Be Saved" and "Funken Spice". Artwork by Aroussi Tabbena, mastering by DDA. The label frames the release for what it is: room made for the next generation.

Alongside that, Hamdi Ryder keeps releasing elsewhere: in September 2026, "Undisputed Truth" cuts a sample from the Motown group The Undisputed Truth, produced by Norman Whitfield, into a track that sits between house, acid, dub and rock.

What is in the crates

The shop is not a label store. There are hundreds of second-hand house, tech house, deep house and minimal records, disco, classic rock, and above all a Tunisian and Arabic selection nobody else brings in.

A few recent arrivals set the tone: Dhafer Youssef's Street of Minarets as a double LP, where the oud meets Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller and Dave Holland; Shakshouka Records' Tunis Hotel Stereo (1977-1984), compiled by Cheb Mimo, which digs up the Tunisian hotel bands, Les 4 Des, Peace Band, Marhaba Band, the Corniche Band, Ridha Zalila, Carthago, Khaled Mellef, where disco, jazz-rock, reggae, funk and North African music collided; Tunisian Vibes on the jazz label Jazz It Records, where American pianist Kyle Schafer rereads Tunisian melodies; near.stoic's Amor Fati, by a Tunis-born, Paris-based producer; an EP by houz on Pintai; or a pressing by DJ Mourad, active in Tunisian electro since the early 1990s, released in 2015 under the alias Unknown Artist and signed by hand copy by copy.

April 2026: the move to L'Ecurie

After almost eight years, Eddisco left the Lafayette room. The farewell post says what the shop had become in the meantime: starting from a small room, it grew into one of the only record shops in the country and a place where a real community took shape, diggers, vinyl lovers, artists and producers from Tunis and beyond.

The new address is L'Ecurie, a private cultural space on rue d'Autriche, a few steps from the old one. The sign is neon, the crates are OSB, the floor is a terrazzo checkerboard, and the light comes through a whole wall of glass blocks.

The opening party was held on Sunday 19 April 2026, from 5pm to 9pm, vinyl-only sets; Idriss Mahjoubi played an all-records set there, recorded and since posted on the shop's YouTube channel, as were the sessions The Mudd Show recorded in the same room.

The shop now posts hours, Monday to Sunday, 10am to 10pm, still by appointment: coffee and soft drinks on site, non-smoking space. L'Ecurie is a private members club, but a visit to Eddisco is settled by message: send a DM or an email to [email protected], book a digging appointment, walk in. In October 2026, after a few days of building work, the shop launched Live Experiment, a series where artists come and experiment with their machines in the store; the first edition, on 10 October, was a dub and reggae live set by Adubtation, invitation only, with the crates open at the same time.

The new address comes with three open calls, which say plainly enough what the shop wants to be: Eddisco buys vinyl collections, takes records on consignment on its shelves, short or long term, and invites independent labels and artists from Tunis and the wider MENA region to show and sell their catalogue there. A physical point of sale for records that had none.

Where to listen

The whole catalogue streams and sells on Bandcamp, the label's mixes and podcasts are on SoundCloud, the second-hand stock on Discogs, and everything else, new arrivals, appointments, open calls, on Instagram.

On Tunis Events, the artists in the catalogue have their own pages: Hamdi Ryder, Khemir, Pan-J, Nesta, Ahmet Mecnun and Space 909.

Photos: the Lafayette shop, © The Vinyl Factory and © Eddisco Records; the shop at L'Ecurie, © Eddisco Records and © Jbeli Ale for Eddisco Records. Sleeves: Va Jo (T.U.G.S), Nyzar Trabelsi (Cyber Dream), Mogli (Diaries of the XTNDD), Salma Remadi (Eddiscology Vol.1), Aroussi Tabbena (Offbeat Dreams, Resistance / You Must Be Saved).

Sources: Eddisco Records (Bandcamp, Instagram), The Vinyl Factory (record shop series, April 2019; Eddisco FM, January 2021), Scene Noise (Downtown Vibes, January 2020; Cyber Dream, November 2020; eight years of Downtown Vibes, December 2021; Eddiscology Vol.1, April 2022; Eddiscology Vol.2, November 2024; vinyl in Tunisia, June 2026), International Music Summit, Scoop Empire (the move to L'Ecurie, April 2026).

Find the next nights and the artists of the Tunisian scene on Tunis Events.