Details

Moroccan oud player Driss El Maloumi has cropped up frequently in these pages, both with a couple of Top of the World albums, including solo record Makan a decade ago and one with the excellent 3MA trio with Ballaké Sissoko and Rajery, who played Songlines Encounters Festival in 2018. Here, he has created a more classical work with Maloumi and his two percussionists joined by the excellent Belgian Watar Quintet, a string quartet plus double bass. They certainly master the quarter tones in the writing, preparing the ground before the oud enters. The opening track, ‘Details’, seems like a sort of overture and the piece gets more dynamic with the subsequent ‘People of the Dawn’ and ‘Rain Dance’ where the oud is the predominant soloist. The percussionists Saïd El Maloumi (brother of Driss) and Lahoucine Baqir are particularly prominent in ‘The Trees Commandements’. Of the eight tracks, the beautiful ’Dabdadat’ comes closest to a slow movement with some lovely violin solos. This is classy, quality stuff, a shame the title is so dull, although the album is full of exquisite details.