Yes, but that was then and this is now. That was a concert, and this is a cd (his second for Tzadik, following the staggering Before the Law). Mesinai builds and uses his bands well, creating thick slabs of sound, unlikely pastiches of acoustic instruments. He's a good drummer and a better arranger, using his bands primarily for drone, flourish and additional percussive effects, creating dramatic sound sculptures.

Before the Law also included wailing lines from violinist Mark Feldman, making it one of the most exciting and unexpected releases on Tzadik's Radical Jewish Culture series. Resurrections for Goatskins has no featured soloist per se, except the composer himself, and for that is a very different record than the former. Given Mesinai's ear for arrangement, it's probably a more successful one. It's a mysteriously slippery record, even if a protagonist such as Feldman is missed.

Like Mesinai, percussionist Raquy Danziger builds unconventional music from traditional Middle Eastern and Asian rhythms and instruments. But where Mesinai strays far from the source, creating dramatic, unique works, Danziger remains in the tradition, using electric guitar and bass and synthesizer to supplement, not drastically augment, the forms. Mesinai and Danziger both play the frame drum and Iranian zarb and daf, but Danziger adds to that a pan-cultural arsenal, including Arabian, Egyptian and Moroccan drums and some unusual strings. The kemenche, an ancestor of the violin with three or four strings (depending on the region) and the yayli tambour, a banjo-like instrument with one bowed string and five resonating strings. Half of the tunes are original compositions, but even they sound steeped in tradition. Her husband Liron Peled on electric guitar, electric bass, percussion and synthesizer and oud player Haig Manokian fill out the sound, and for a self-produced disc that sound is rich and surprisingly loud.

Dust is at core a document of Danziger's remarkable talents. She was born in the U.S. and studied violin, only discovering Persian percussion when traveling in India and Israel in the '90s. While some tracks have a heavy rock sound, it is essentially the product of her studies in those traditional forms. Mesinai, on the other hand, escapes those traditions, creating a music of the mind. That the composer's mind is an Israeli one echoes throughout, but Mesinai's compositional sense runs deeper than the tradition of which it's borne.