Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour)

Egyptian multi-instrumentalist Maurice Louca is known for navigating between electronic dance music, crossovers with Egypt’s contemporary maghraganat music, participating in theatre and supporting other musicians like Maryam Saleh and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh in the excellent Lekhfa collaboration. Here, he invited three leading members of Lebanon’s improvisational music scene, Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet and electronics), Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar) and Raed Yassin (double bass), along with percussionist Khaled Yassine, harpist Christine Kazaryan and cellist Anthea Caddy. The recording was made in Brussels, with support from Mophradat, a Brussels-based Arab arts fund; sadly, this probably tells us something about the state of culture in Egypt.

The music meanders between a free jazz-like mood and ambient. The liner notes refer to Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders, I would rather think of early instrumental Jefferson Airplane, or King Crimson, or Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis. The beautiful opening track, ‘El-Fazza’ah (The Slip and Slide)’, starts with a huge build-up of industrial noise, but evolves into beautifully modulating guitar chords. In ‘Bidayat (Holocene)’ an additional violin and tonal scales (Louca had his guitar adapted for Oriental microtones) make this the most traditionally Arabic track, and the easiest to access; I would however recommend ‘El-Gullashah (Foul Tongue)’ as the cut to try, being a sort of middle ground, featuring a screeching saxophone, Louca’s melodic guitar and ostinato drone noises.