Giant + Guitar

Wewantsounds continues its remarkable work in excavating long deleted Arabic albums of the 1970s and reissuing them on LP (and digitally). Omar Khorshid’s landmark instrumental album Giant + Guitar features Khorshid’s unique electric guitar sound as he employs intricate Arabic melodies, motifs and rhythms to create a pulsing, eerie, almost psychedelic sound.

Khorshid’s short life (he died aged 36 in a road accident) suggests an extraordinary talent – the Egyptian guitarist accompanied the likes of Oum Kalthoum, Abdel Halim Hafez and Farid El-Atrache before moving to Beirut in 1973 where he started recording a string of superb albums that pushed the envelope as to Arabic music’s many possibilities. The enthralling opening track, ‘Raqset el Fadaa’, begins with a long, hypnotic guitar intro then speeds up with the backing of an organ any garage band would have been proud of; Arabic percussion adds drama and an early synthesizer brings a beautifully exotic flavour. I’m reminded of the late Dick Dale’s ‘Misirlou’ (he being an Arab-American who employed Oriental scales in his surf instrumentals) with a bellydance beat. If that sounds mesmerising, well it is! And the rest of the album continues in a similar ‘mash-up’ vein as organ and guitar battle it out over pulsing percussion. Dynamic, danceable and hugely entertaining, Giant + Guitar is a lost gem worth discovering.