Ariwo (2017)
4 tracks, 45 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes
By looking at the little (Iran/Cuba) up there, you might be expecting something different. I know I was when I first came across the group. I reckon I was thinking maybe salsa music with tar and daf, perhaps? I’m not sure, but it didn’t sound too promising. But Ariwo are nothing like that.
The band as they appear on this debut album are a trio of Cubans in percussionists Oreste Noda and Hammadi Valdes and jazz trumpeter Yelfris Valdes, together with Iranian producer and electronicist Pouya Ehsaei. When they make music together, it is a pulsating mix of electronica, traditional Afro-Cuban religious music and jazz. It’s downtempo and dark, and dubby in places. It’s very serious in its own way, profound even, but you can tell everyone’s having a great time of it. It all sounds so natural, helped by the ease at which the musicians interact.
Pouya’s drum programming mingles with the Latin percussion so smoothly as to eventually sound like it’s all from one tradition, and the synth-bass and other electronics make a perfect bed for both the jazz trumpet and Afro-Cuban chants. Then, on top of all that, it is all produced and treated with many delays, distortions, reverbs and other sonic refigurements to give everything the necessary amount of space, depth and intensity. It somehow manages to be both danceable and contemplative at once, although there are times where the balance shifts more to one end than the other. For a debut, Ariwo seems like such an accomplished work. There may only be four tracks, but you still get your album’s worth – nothing is rushed, the pieces all develop at their own pace, swelling and diminishing and changing course whenever it’s right but always with the same destination in mind.
Ariwo have their second album, Quasi, coming out next month – in fact, they have just announced today that it will be out on the 15th April. There's some changes: Canadian jazzer Jay Phelps steps into the role as trumpeter, and it also features Binker Golding as a guest on several tracks, who is one of my favourite saxophonists in the UK today. With two years of gigs, festivals and jams all over the world to let their sound percolate, I really can’t wait to hear what they’ve come up with.
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