So. A curio from the world of, uh, alt-world music? No, that’s entirely ridiculous and not a little bit condescending as fuck. What’s holding this split release together? Superficially, it’s all faintly “esoteric” or something like wonky improvisations writ with pan-Arabic influence but, uh, frankly there’s not a great deal in common musically with the two sides of Carte Blanche — besides, perhaps, the world that Sun City Girls inhabit of global musical tourism.
Sir Richard Bishop and W David Oliphant have cooked up something that’s probably familiar to anyone who knows what SCG are about. SRB loosely improvising over a bed of drifting pseudo-Tibetanisms and reverby wash like some kind of death-rite with data transfer fucking up the signal. It’s devoid of the kind of tensions that “funereal” might suggest, so perhaps it’s more appropriate to say it’s a kind of melancholy stasis of bardo. Or, like, that kind of drifting clang that Jackie-O Motherfucker were specialising in in the early 2000s. It’s definitely setting a mood, but perhaps I’m not hearing enough space to appreciate what’s going on. But it’s definitely up there with the sort of thing you’d expect from prime Sun City Girl-isms.
Karkhana are a very international band of multi-instrumentalists, hailing from diffuse traditions in Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul. Their blurb mentions shaabi, tarab and sufi, but to my (distinctly untutored ears) they sound close enough to a kind of free music tradition that might extend from The Art Ensemble Of Chicago to modern-er jammy / psychy improv. With, uh, distinctly pan-Arabic instrumentation. And touches of, like, electronic fizz and broken loops. So probably nothing like Art Ensemble at all. Moving on…Nadah El Shazly is their collaborator for this and I’m not entirely clear what her role is — ostensibly just vocalist, but given the astonishing ear for detail and arrangement in 2017’s Ahwar, I suspect she had a stronger hand than that suggests. And just to emphasise something — Ahwar is an absolutely formidable record, tense and gorgeous, and arranged with the sort of producer’s attention to detail that’s in a tradition that (in my head) includes Missy Elliot, Dr Dre, Björk or Bernard Parmegiani.
Anyway — this side. The ensemble’s strides do a banging job of sluggishly, almost reluctantly grooving towards rhythms. It’s like El Shazly has written a bunch of mournful songs and the job of the band, besides drummers, is to distend that to breaking point. Something like an inverted take on Patty Walters‘ “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair”. Shazly’s voice falls in and out of the mix, lending this kind of grinding longing to the pieces, particularly “Dans Ma Bouche, Une Autre Bouche’. I think that translates to “Inside My Mouth, Another Mouth”, but I’m sure Freq‘s Francophone editor will correct me there [10/10; ed]. Closer “Prends-moi En Photo Pendant Que Je Pleur” has an oud just about (but never quite) articulating a melody — actually oddly reminding me of an (absolutely spellbinding) track on Ground Zero‘s Last Concert, minus the Tibetan horns. Simultaneously I’m reminded of another show I saw a couple of years ago of Kamila Jubran / WASL which was, frankly, embarrassingly amazing. Karkhana lack the turn-on-a-dime dynamics of Jubran and the songs aren’t quite as “traditional sounding” (for whatever that means from someone who didn’t grow up with Arabic song), but the fusing of free improv dynamics, modes that veer towards maqqamat and recognisable song is a pretty great combination.Perhaps most of all, this is a great record from the days when “tasters” were a thing — bigger names lending their platform to lesser names, merging of styles and traditions and seeing another side to people. I can’t deny that this isn’t topping the heights of El Shazly’s Ahwad (which, to repeat, is an absolute ten thousand percent belter), but Carte Blanche is a great place to dip into some very distinct takes on improvisation beyond equal temperament and regular rhythm.
-Kev Nickells-
