H (2018)
7 tracks, 40 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes
H is a multimedia art project from L’Hijâz’Car bandleader and oud player Grégory Dargent, of which this album is only half. Together with a 112-page book of artful, haunting photographs taken by Dargent himself, this music is a meditation on the nuclear bomb tests conducted in the Algerian Sahara in the 1960s and their impacts on the land, nature and the local nomadic peoples. Dargent created the project after learning about the tests in 2013 and visiting the sites and speaking to the people in Reggane and Tamanrasset in 2017.
The album is created by a trio of Dargent on oud and electronics, Anil Eraslan on cello and electronics and Wassim Halal on Arabic drums and percussion. As with the subject matter, the music of H is harrowing. Its concept was to sound irradiated, and this is achieved with unsettling accuracy. Between the trio’s acoustic instruments they create a style based in equal parts on Arabic and European classical music and Maghrebi folk music, but the introduction of electronics changes and corrupts those traditions with acrid and abrasive noise, turning it at points nearly into non-music.
Despite, and in a way, because of, its disturbing and distressing element, this album becomes strangely beautiful. The ethereal art music struggles against the ugliness of the electronics as the natural struggles against the artificial, a fragile rose blooming from cracked concrete. This music is despair and hope, pain and healing, loss and regrowth. H is a powerful listen and its sonic journey is not one to take lightly, but it is an important one to take nonetheless. Through image and sound, Dargent has created an incredibly impactful work of art.
Image © Grégory Dargent
No comments:
Post a Comment