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Burj Al Imam

by A Trio & Alan Bishop

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Burj Al Imam 13:24
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about

It is through his work for "world music" label Sublime Frequencies, that Bishop met and became friends with Lebanese improvising musicians Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Raed Yassin (double bass) and Sharif Sehnaoui (electric guitar), who have operated collectively as free jazz unit “A Trio” since 2003. In 2012, during a trip to Beirut to participate in the annual Irtijal Festival for Experimental Music, Bishop entered the studio with Kerbaj, Sehnaoui and Yassin, to lay down the first rough sketches of the “Burj el Imam” album.

The album was eventually completed a year later, during another one of Bishop’s frequent visits to the Lebanese capital. Entirely recorded at Tunefork Studios, a highly esteemed recording studio located on the outskirts of Beirut, “Burj el Imam”’s five tracks include three largely improvised numbers, a loose reworking of early Sun City Girls track “The Imam”, and a cover of traditional Americana song “Gently Johnny”.
The album displays remarkable coherence, for 4 musicians coming from such different backgrounds.

True to their habits, Kerbaj, Sehnaoui and Yassin create acoustic improvised drones that range from insistent, chiming resonances with emergency alarm bells, to low thrumming hums – evoking helicopter gunships hovering overhead, or bulldozers demolishing bomb-blasted apartments. The three musicians largely avoid conventional technique, instead using what sounds like motorized devices to generate rattling, metallic vibrations, building a mechanistic backdrop out of which the instruments’ true voices occasionally arise. Perched above the ambient din, Bishop is in fine form, and alternates between gentle crooning and malevolent whispering.
credits
released June 22, 2015

Alan Bishop: guitar, voice
Mazen Kerbaj: trumpet
Sharif Sehnaoui: guitar
Raed Yassin: double bass

Recorded and mixed in 2012 by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut, Lebanon
Mastered by Harris Newman, Greymarket Mastering, Montreal, Canada

Design by Studio Safar

CD version produced in Lebanon by Annihaya
Vinyl version available to order from Unrock

credits

released June 22, 2015

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Raed Yassin Berlin, Germany

Artist and Musician

Double Bass
Synthesisers
Turntables
Electronics
Compositions

founding member of PRAED, A Trio and Malayeen

one of the organisers of IRTIJAL festival

Founder of Annihaya Music Label
... more

contact / help

Contact Raed Yassin

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