Resonance/Dissonance (2011)
7 tracks, 51 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes
Resonance/Dissonance is a completely solo album: it’s just Khyam Allami and his oud.
As an Iraqi born in Syria and raised in the UK, Allami took up the distinctive Arabic lute at the age of 23 to connect more closely with his own culture and history as it was being destroyed by invading forces from the US and the UK. Only six years after he started playing, the BBC recognised him not only as a prodigious talent, but as the next in a long line of Iraqi master musicians to both transmit and innovate their classical music. He became the first to work with the BBC’s World Routes Academy, which led to his performance as part of the Proms and solidified his status as the most highly-regarded oud player in the country. This album, his debut, was released the next year.
This whole album is full of extremely intricate and virtuosic playing. It is moody, contemplative and astoundingly beautiful. But honestly, I chose this album for one track more than anything. The piece ‘An Alif/An Apex’ is a masterpiece. For it to stand out so far in an album that contains so many wonderful pieces, it must really be next-level. The piece is entirely within the soundworld of the Arabic classical tradition, but there is so, so much in there. If it was played on distorted electric guitar, it would be straight-up metal. If it was on a piano, it would slot into a Western classical suite without raising any eyebrows. Add some palmas and it’s flamenco. Allami’s oud playing is so delicate but moves somehow imperceptibly into passages of blistering technique and then onto intense, barely-bridled passion, before it’s back again to strokes so gentle as to be almost whispered…
This is proper gives-you-shivers stuff. This whole album is the work of a master, but listening to ‘An Alif/An Apex’ is something else, an all-consuming atmosphere that will leave you dead to the world for eight minutes, before waking you up having experienced something incredible. It truly is one of my favourite pieces of classical music ever.
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