"A" Trio: Kerbaj / Sehnaoui / Yassin

Music To Our Ears

Label: Al Maslakh Country: Lebanon

"Could this be the sound of war? Beirut based trumpet player Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975, the year that saw the beginning of Lebanon's quarter century of savage internecine struggles - and the rumble of conflict permeates this release. Al Maslakh, the label he founded with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui in 2005, translates as The Slaughterhouse and has a bloody cleaver for a logo, while Kerbaj's cubist-inspired cartoon sleeve illustrations look like Guernica with guitars. The acoustic improvised drones they make, together with bassist Raed Yassin, range from insistent, chiming resonances with emergency alarm bells to low thrumming hums - evoking helicopter gunships hovering overhead, or bulldozers demolishing bomb-blasted apartments. All three musicians largely avoid conventional technique, instead using what sounds like motorised devices to generate rattling, metallic vibrations, building a mechanistic backdrop out of which the instruments' true voices occasionally - and very briefly - arise like anguished cries for help. It's rare to hear improvisation making such a powerful comment on the dehumanising effects of industrialised violence."-Daniel Spicer, The Wire