Cloister by Tom Chant & Sharif Sehnaoui

This is a soprano sax/acoustic guitar session recorded at Sehnaoui's apartment in Paris, which is near an old cloister. The record comprises three long improvisations whose grammar derives from an obstinate research for uncharted areas of intelligent needlework, thus fertilizing the ground for new contiguities between the percussive resonance of instruments.
The results achieved by this duo through the application of extended techniques bring the whole thing to shine, and quite often. Chant's saxophone creates its illusoriness through reversible hoarseness and chirping tremolos, yet at the same time his playing is radioscopic, bringing out all the multiphonic sensibility at the right moments while eradicating any immunity from its almost probabilistic aesthetic. Sehnaoui's technical clothing exploits every particle of his guitar; he fills gaps with wooden friction, string detuning and relaxed responsiveness. Gentle bumps and muffled roars respond to Chant's calls without hurry, and listening to the Lebanese artist hit the strings with random jauntiness in the third section, with the saxophonist bouncing around those semi-chords like an excited peeping bird, adds a pinch of salt to an already appetizing recipe.

Massimo Ricci [Touching Extremes]

Al Maslakh is a UFO created in Beirut in the early 2000's, to publish the un-publishable from Lebanon's experimental music scene and beyond.

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