Label: Asphodel Format: CD,LP
The Heretic of Ether is one of those albums that comes out of the blue, hovers overhead and arond the ears and works its way into the subconscious. Seemingly a concept album concerning the life, death and re-birth of one Gashka Gavör, Moroccan Bedouin (or Badawi) heretic of the title, it makes a timeless quest romance in musical form which buzzes with passion and a deep knowledge of composer Raz Mesinai‘s musical and cultural heritage.
Blending the Western technological skills and North African percussion Mesinai uses so effectively in New York bass monsters Sub Dub with Moroccan instruments as well as violin and cello, the Badawi project here makes for a genuine Fourth World excursion into a virtual space of mixing-desk Sufi dub and resonant string- sections. The atmosphere of open desert space, and of elemental forces working on the music itself come though particularly in the flowing electric bass line of “Enter The Heretic,” a solemn, cruising blend of the traditional and modern, or in the following sections which describe the death and re-birth of Gavör, returning to the booming bass-beat and hypnotic hand drums of “Welcoming”.
Cyclic motifs, sample loops and strings construct an appropriate storm of drones which in turn develop into passages of calm or furious energy – Romantic in the best possible way, epic and stately, The Heretic Of Ether is a fantastic combination of not-so diverse elements into a convincing whole. Like North Africa itself, the album is the product of a world or two of influences, ancient, modern and futuristic, containing far more than than the surface stereotypes of a Western viewpoint may be accustomed. One of the record’s greatest achievments is to seemingly come fully-formed out of the ether itself, and as a consequence is quite hard to pin down into rigid categories or definitions of genre. An archetypal experience, mystical without the accompanying New Age kipple which too often goes with such (for want of a better term) fusions, and quite unique.
-Tango-Mango-
