Le Cri du Cyclope

French-Lebanese percussionist Wassim Halal was originally trained in Lebanese dabke music. His first album, Revolutionary Birds, with Mounir Troudi and Erwan Keravec, was an unusually expansive series of tweaked trio improvisations, which nevertheless sound familiar. Here over three CDs, the enlarged forces (strings, mizmar, trumpet, saxophone and gamelan among others) create an individual blend of bold, jarring colours and polyrhythms that fit our zeitgeist – a disorienting globalised anonymity – and depict a post-apocalyptic world lacking human life (and, by extension, traditional melody). Halal's unconventional and versatile darbuka initially occupies the lion's share before woodwind, brass and strings later contribute.

Of many highlights, the spitting, splashing woodwind in ‘Dans le Ventre de la Bête’ faintly recalls Stravinsky's opening to The Rite of Spring. The title-track's heavily saturated, ever louder darbuka becomes a cacophony through which a blaring mizmar melody emerges – during stupor or mental detachment. ‘Prisme de 3’ introduces a minimalistic Middle Eastern melody that grows into a dissonant, disturbing and groaning dance. Accordion, clarinet and trumpet jostle for attention in ‘Dernier Tambour’ before they all run a thunderous three-way race. And what an exciting mizmar battle the Egyptian folk melody ‘De Zeus’ generates! A resounding success.