Raed Yassin – Archeophany

So, one of the things about no longer working from home is that I don’t spend so much time checking out new music. However, that doesn’t really excuse the length of time since my last post since I have about 10 albums I think should be shared widely, so the real reason is that I didn’t do any posts. Also, I moved house. Also, I spent time finishing off an epic project of my own stuff, which I may or may not write about at some point.

I discovered this through the Quietus. It is most experimental, most hypnotic, most droney, and, like an awful lot of stuff I post here, I have no idea where to begin describing it apart from what I have already typed. The opening piece doesn’t really prepare you for what comes after, but it does give a reason for the closing piece.

It does, at times, remind me of Malayeen, albeit that might be me being lazy because of relative geographical proximity.

Malayeen

I don’t find much about these on tinternet, though I can tell you that Malayeen are “the Lebanese trio of Raed Yassin (Keyboards, Turntables & Electronics),Charbel Haber (Electric Guitar & Electronics) and Khaled Yassine (Darbouka, Percussion).” I believe I actually first read about them over at Dusted in Exile, but can’t be bothered to trawl their archives (I am not a fan of the tumblr sites, no, not at all).

Given my general abhorrence to labelling musics these days, it probably comes as no surprise to start stumbling across music that my limited western mindset wouldn’t even know where to start in terms of classification (although I believe I may have had a rant about the notion of classification…) All I’m going to tell you is that this puts me in a trance, particularly the longer songs on the album (one of which I have linked up top), and by my definitions, that makes this music psychedelic. It also reminds me somewhat of some of the ecstatic Sufi music I’ve heard. Boy, would I love to be around that in real time.

Because I can’t find any ways of playing you the album, here’s another tune: