Mattias De Craene | Black Koyo – Mattias De Craene | Black Koyo

WERF

After a period of internal searching, sax player and musical adventurer Mattias De Craene has teamed up with Belgium-based Gnawa ensemble Black Koyo to explore how his Western minimalism can merge with the hypnotic north African tradition.

On the album, Mattias brings his trademark textural sax and synth backdrops while Black Koyo bring the ritual chants, guimbri (a three-string bass lute), the qraqeb (a kind of metal castanet) and a sense of mystery. Together, these disparate acts make a six-part suite that offers Gnawa traditionals in expansive and often dreamlike settings. It is interesting that, as lead vocalist Hicham Balil says, although the words are sung with fervour and belief, to this day no-one fully understands their exact meaning and yet the group is still able to inhabit them in a way that sounds sincere.

The opening track is a gentle, wistful introduction, the voices echoing distant and mysterious awash in a sea of light synth sounds. The spoken words are deep and knowing, attempting as they are to explain the inexplicable. The guimbri is introduced on “Makatan” and its repetitive circular strokes surround the voices, homely and welcoming. The merging of the sax drift is seamless and as it wanders it looks over the shoulders of the singers as their chants gather momentum, growing gradually more intense.

The percussive snap of handclaps give form to the words that tumble and flow as they have for hundreds of years. These pieces are long, and with the qraqeb intoning along with the unfamiliar constantly evolving wash of synths, the feeling is of being somewhere entirely new.

“Moulay Abdelah Chrif” is more minimalist, the tone of the guimbri sitting comfortably against the wash of synths with ranked call and response voices and handclaps reacting to the torpid backdrop as Mattias’s sax makes darting excursions, adding a minor jazzy ruefulness to the ecstatic rhythm. The vocal on “Fatcha” reminded me of waking up early to the sound of the muezzin issuing from the local minaret during a holiday to Istanbul, its smoky distance setting us up for the brooding “Bridge Of Dust And Air”; the spoken words immediate and clear, fascinating in their sibilant construction and sweet harshness.

The distant abstractions and ghostly backing voices are the antithesis of the rhythmic drama that has come before, and slightly unsettling with the proximity of the voice and the random creaks and groans constructing a minimalist skeleton. The variety of the combinations on offer here is impressive, and with the length of the pieces allowing them to really insinuate, the listener is held rapt.

The album rounds out with a continuation of the spectral calls, the synth washes and drifting sax spinning gossamer threads. The sax is barely determined, its sound a step beyond breath; until a shaking rhythm eventually emerges and the drifting tones become harsher, edged with feedback. The vocals and the sax are whipping against one another, pushing further into ecstatic transformation before the end finally arrives.

This album is an extraordinary feat, one that draws two disparate traditions together and constructs a whole new world. It is exciting and engrossing, and highly recommended.

-Mr Olivetti-