In the past few years I’ve gotten to know, and have the pleasure of working with, Vancouver treasure Emad Armoush. If you are familiar with the city’s music scene where jazz, improv, middle-eastern and European music traditions collide, you’ll probably know of the group Haram, led by Gordon Grdina. The vocalist and ney player of that oft-lauded and frequently incendiary supergroup is Emad Armoush. You may also recall flamenco nights at Kino Cafe on Cambie Street. Emad often played flamenco there.
Recently Emad has been honing several unique side projects including the groups Rayhan, La Syrie Libre and his Avant-garde Flamenco Trio. Now, finally, there is a gorgeous and entrancing new solo CD release titled Reminiscing Onwards. I was delighted to be asked again to provide imagery and design work for this project and as an added bonus I was able to get three short videos done at the recording sessions on Vancouver Island with a star production team that included Jesse and Josh Zubot.
From one who knows this music well…
Intimate though it is, Reminiscing Onwards is a big record. Searching for a summation, I’m reminded of the poet Walt Whitman’s famous self-description: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Emad Armoush’s
music can be fairly said to contain universes, some self-created, some assembled from fragments and residue, some built of longing and others of hope. And all of the largeness here—and the largesse, too, for this is generous music—is animated by heart.
He’s also the kind of musician who’s aware of how solo recordings normally go, and who’s intent on avoiding the obvious patterns. Classical recitals follow the formal structures of sonata, nocturne, and partita, illuminating and expanding those architectures through interpretive subtlety and personalized microdynamics. Jazz soloists lovingly interrogate familiar chord progressions and make them new. Singer-songwriters frequently pen sonic diaries, squeezing luminous, enduring art out of harrowing descents into sorrow or madness.
Reminiscing Onwards doesn’t follow any of these templates. Instead, Armoush seems to start each piece with a simple question: “What if?”
What if an atonal classical guitar, a shaman’s clicking reindeer-hoof rattle, and an impressionistic reed flute got together in a reverberant cave to ponder the mysteries of existence? Album opener “Inquisitive” asks just that, and sets the tone for the rest of the record: thoughtful, a little dark, and yet more probing than despairing.
– Alex Varty
Emad’s work can be explored and purchased via Bandcamp