On Moonshine, Maurice Louca’s ensemble Elephantine uses classical Middle Eastern modal music as a springboard to an entrancing blend of genre-defying sounds. It’s a dense, heady swirl of multi-cultural instrumentation united by jazz and other improvisational styles and modernist classical music.
Louca, who is based in Cairo, is a prolific member of Egypt’s thriving experimental arts scene. A composer and player of multiple instruments, on Moonshine, his most ambitious project yet, he plays guitar, lap steel, and synthesizer as he guides the nine-piece ensemble on a 40-minute trip from the souk to other worlds. The group includes some of the 12-person ensemble that played on his previous release, which rather confusingly was under Louca’s name and titled Elephantine. Based on touring that album for the past year the ensemble is now named Elephantine and continues in a similar vein.
Along for the ride this time are Tommaso Cappellato and Özün Usta on drums (and yes, that’s a lot of drums!), Rosa Brunello on double bass, Piero Bittolo Bon on alto sax and electronics, Rasmus Svale Kjærgård Lund on tuba, Els Vandeweyer on vibraphone, Daniel Gahrton on baritone sax, Isak Hedtjärn on clarinet, and Louca.
The first single, “Trembler,” spotlights the clarinet and saxes with a melody that skirts klezmer and Middle Eastern, which is then taken over by Louca’s analog synth played with overtones of flute and shawm, all over a huge, danceable funk/hip-hop style beat on a full kit. This one is hugely fun, and eschews the skronk and free exploration, but still emerges as a dense, multi-layered, polyrhythmic work.
The album opens with “Moonshine,” the three-part suite that gives the album its title. It’s a nearly 20-minute ride through a lot of fascinating sounds. Part I starts off with the horn section (tuba included) running through the Levantine melody before the rest of the band kicks in and it sounds like the mid-80s Zappa big band, all complex rhythms, a wall of drums and vibes, Louca’s guitar and Gahrton’s bari sax adding color. Bittolo Bon and Hedtjärn take turns going wild on the alto and clarinet, and the whole ensemble returns for a satisfying coda. Part II takes a similar path, with skads of high-level improvising and another catchy pentatonic tune. Part III is my favorite track, prominently featuring Brunello’s double bass on a two-minute opening solo, joined by Louca’s woozy lap steel, some bowed vibes and spacy synth, eventually revealing itself as one of my favorite sub-genres, ambient country, but from an Old World perspective.
The closer, “Achilles Heel” is most experimental of all, opening with a lovely, languid tuba solo and cycling through all sorts of free improvisation, modernist exploration, and skittering synthesizers, a 12-minute tour de force for this amazing ensemble. Elephantine’s Moonshine is highly recommended for the adventurous listener. Available on CD and streaming as well as vinyl.
(Northern Spy/Sub Rosa, 2023)
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