Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp, Ifriqiyya Electrique
Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp
The Art of Perelman-Shipp Volume 7: Dione
(Leo)
Jazz pianist Matthew Shipp raised a few eyebrows when he announced that his album Piano Song would be his last for the label Thirsty Ear and that he is “immensely slowing down” his recording operations (as he told Observer in an interview earlier this year), wanting to avoid being an artist who just goes through the motions in the latter years of his career.
However, on the bright side, he’ll concentrate on live performances and continue to be a curator for Thirsty Ear, and releases will continue to trickle out for a while (including several on the legendary ESP-Disk’ label), adding to Shipp’s already vast catalog as a leader and sideman.
Shipp’s collaborations with Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman alone are prolific, and this year saw the release of the 7-volume series The Art of Perelman-Shipp, with each volume taking its name (with the exception of Saturn) from one of Saturn’s moons.
While it’s a solid series, one of the standouts for this writer was the final installment, Dione, with drummer Andrew Cyrille, known for his work with Cecil Taylor and Trio 3, along with his impressive material as a bandleader.
“Pt. 2” finds Shipp offering a lyricism that’s both melancholic and puzzling, gently shuffling through non-obvious chords, while Perelman deals out smoky, vibrato-rich crawls with peculiar twitches, suggesting a slinky gait and dealing with an itch that needs to be publicly scratched in not-so-subtle ways; the end is particularly satisfying with patterns intertwining.
For “Pt. 3,” Cyrille uses a constant kinetic motion without discernible repetition, and Perelman constantly bends his notes, at times resembling duck calls and managing to sound wild yet controlled; Shipp scampers playfully and alternates between left and right-hand action before shifting moods toward the end with tender drifting.
In “Pt. 4,” Shipp jabs, sparring with Perelman’s unflappable dives and rises, which effortlessly glide upward as if carried by forceful gusts of wind; Cyrille adds his underlying bumpy textures with tom taps, and the piece ends with abstract flutters. One notable moment in “Pt. 7” is when Perelman and Shipp are locked into hypnotic rhythm, suggesting vaguely some South American dance.
Like with Shipp’s frequent collaborators, including William Parker, David S. Ware and Michael Bisio, Perelman seems to have a mind-meld capability with Shipp, where the two complement each other’s playing without mirroring or losing momentum, demonstrated beautifully on Dione.
Ifriqiyya Electrique
Rûwâhîne
(Glitterbeat)
Ifriqiyya Electrique is a novel project from guitarist and field recordist François Cambuzat and bassist Gianna Greco (members of the group Putan Club and collaborators with no-wave legend Lydia Lunch) which combines industrial music with chanting from Tunisian adherents of Tasawwuf (a.k.a. Sufism in the western world), the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islam.
The full-length album Rûwâhîne begins with atmospheric, foggy rumbling with indistinct, low vocals approaching a chant, among hand-struck drumbeats, on the track “Laa la illa Allah.”
Soon, the dark moods of industrial music are made more apparent on “Qaadrii–Salaam Alaik–Massarh,” and the listener has the realization that this ostensibly nonsensible combination actually kind of works, with dissonant and bent guitar notes, among drones and distortion; however, three minutes in, electronic beats enter the picture, which are unnecessary if anything. However, this complex, trance-inducing stew manages to hold itself together.
The album takes its name from the spirits in a Banga ritual of adorcism, which is the opposite of exorcism, where spirits are possessed rather than forced out, and four members of the Banga community join Cambuzat and Greco in Ifriqiyya Electrique—Tarek Sultan, Yahia Chouchen, Youssef Ghazala and Ali Chouchen—who sing and play hand-struck drums and krakebs (large iron castanets).
The most striking features of Rûwâhîne are its sinister call-and-response exchanges with murky vocals, melding with the post-punk/industrial aesthetic.
Sometimes the enhanced beats work on the nine-minute track “Annabi Mohammad–Laa la illa Allah–Deg el bendir,” but this writer’s attitude swings wildly on that topic; whenever a four-on-the-floor repetition enters the picture—or really, anything suggesting formal and established western-world rhythms—it’s like the small, special world they’ve created is shattered like a snow globe.
At its best, it matches the dystopian intensity with the ecstatic Tasawwuf chants, but at its least satisfying, it channels some post-Nine Inch Nails generic industrial music.