By Don Phipps
There’s a foreverness in the music of Anouar Brahem’s After the Last Sky. The music covers a landscape of feelings that stretches outward over a vast desert – the undulating dunes, the wind, the dry arid heat, the romance – a beautiful and captivating work that reaches out in profound grace.
This is music to be savored, like that perfect glass of pinot noir or chianti on a warm summer evening – the moon and planets emerging from the ether. Brahem is a master of the Middle Eastern oud, an instrument that surfaced in the Middle Ages. It has a neck and a round bowl shape that adheres to the soundboard. And even though the instrument speaks to antiquity, under Brahem’s masterful technique, it becomes a jazzy bouquet of texture and sound, delicate yet pronounced.
Brahem is joined by the magnificent Dave Holland on bass, Django Bates on piano, and Anja Lechner on cello. Together they produce intimate music, just spicy enough at times to suggest sensual dances, while at other times, one can imagine windswept dunes that stretch forever outward against a blue sky, not unlike the movie opening of Anthony Minghella’s movie The English Patient or the great North African terrain described in Paul Bowles seminal novel The Sheltering Sky. Brahem also composed the numbers herein (except for “The Eternal Olive Tree, which he jointly composed with Dave Holland),
The music begs the question – what is after the last sky? We know for all living things there is a last sky. And that may speak to why the compositions possess a mysterious quality – the contemplation of what comes after. What hammers home this contemplation is the sweeping and haunting music that permeate the compositions. Of note in this regard are Lechner’s wonderful, bowed phrases. Check out her closing on “Endless Wandering” or her work on the short tone poem “Vague,” which lifts the piece into the sublime.
Holland stays mostly in the background, creating mood and atmospheres with plucks or soft, steady, and exquisite repetition (for example, his arpeggios on “The Sweet Oranges of Jaffa”). Occasionally, his lines emerge like a sailboat driven briskly by the wind – for instance, the beginning of “The Eternal Olive Tree.” And Bates creates seemingly uninterrupted poetry. On “After the Last Sky,” listen for the overtones in his unison duet with Brahem. Or his delicate interchange with Holland on “Never Forget.” Or the interlude he provides on “Edward Said’s Reverie.” Or the ballet of the fingers he brings to “Awake,” perhaps the most engaging piece on the album.
But if this effort belongs to anyone, it is most certainly Anouar Brahem. His popping and precise attacks and plucks, the breathing space he gives to his notes (his opening on “After the Last Sky), and his sweeping panoramic motifs (“Endless Wandering”) propel the music in unhurried fashion – think sea turtle swimming blithely by, surrounded by the dark blue water and beneath it, sparkling white sand.
“Sky” holds other charms – the tango-ish feel of “Dancing Under the Meteorites” or the artful dance of “The Sweet Oranges of Jaffa,” the black and white of “Remembering Hind,” or the salsa undertones in “After the Last Sky.” Brahem offers this point of view: “Today, the sonic materials that seem particularly transformable and stimulating to me are those that combine tradition and modernity…. For example, the Arabic maqams, which are at the heart of my musical identity, fascinate me with their melodic richness and their ability to integrate into contemporary musical contexts. They offer an infinite terrain for experimentation. I find it exciting to juxtapose these ancient modal structures with harmonic approaches from jazz, creating a dialogue between past and present, between cultures and styles.”
An infinite terrain…. Yes, and it all adds up to a beautiful and exotic experience – sounds and notes that take you far away to open ground, stunning vistas, and wind-swept patterns crossing a distant dune. Enjoy!
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