Land Of Kush - Monogamy

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3...according to our Phil on Thu 27 May, 2010.

Sam Shalabi's psych arab jazz fest 'The Land of Kush' are back with a new album on Canada's own Constellation records. I seem to remember liking the last album but that was a couple of years ago and so many records are hurtling through the doors here these days it's getting hard to keep track. Anyway Sam and his oud are kept busy making free sounding psych arab influenced records. Lots of strings and weird percussion are the order of the day, occasional vocals peer out and every so often you get a skronk from what appears to be one of those saxophone things. It's a long interesting record which will keep listeners busy for a good while as it's very free sounding so it's gonna take a bit to get used to. It's not as immediate as his last album but I can hear there's some tasty morsels to be had here!!

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* LIMITED DELUXE VINYL SET - Double 180gr Vinyl set w/ hardboard gatefold sleeve, screened poster, insert and CD
copy of the album inclded.

* Sam Shalabi's Land Of Kush project returns: his psych-arabic jazz orchestra has produced a second album of
intensely genre-defying, polymorphic, big band madness.
* Where Shalabi structured last year's mesmerising Against The Day album around the Thomas Pynchon novel of the
same name, this time Shalabi tackles concepts of shame, sexuality and society in a new multi-movement work entitled
Monogamy.

* Rounding up many of the same Montreal-based improv and experimental players featured on Against The Day,
Shalabi deploys a cast of two dozen musicians and sound artists to realise this fantastic new compositional hybrid of
Middle Eastern tropes and Western vocabularies

of jazz, psychedelia and experimental/free music.
* For the Monogamy album, the group has been given its own sub-moniker as The Egyptian Light Orchestra. The band
is a truly hydra-headed beast on this recording and woodwinds careen around the drone/backbeat of the major
movements, shifting between short melodic punctuations, free excursions, and consolidated unison lines. Dissonant
piano, synth and electronics bubble below, above and at the outer limits of the mix. Several transitions also allow for
various players to stretch out in some lovely virtuosic solo passages. Shalabi's oud anchors the album's opening and
closing pieces, as well as the glorious 'Tunnel Visions' piece at the album's midpoint. The rhythm section comprising
standard trap kits, upright basses and traditional Eastern percussion holds down one hypnotic groove after another.
* For fans of: Ethiopiques, Mulatu Astatke, Black Star Orkestar, Sun Ra, Silver Mt. Zion