Search results: Gaya

Review: Maha was the vocalist with Salah Ragab's Cairo jazz band and in 1979 she recorded this somehow completely unknown album. It is a real world music gem that previously only came on cassette, and features production from Hany Shenoda of Al Massrieen. It mixes up plenty of Egyptian musical traditions with jazz, funk, soul and Latin influences. There's a string-laced serenity to 'Kabl Ma Nessallem We Nemshy' and 'Ala Shat El Nesyan' which stand out as particular highlights. Maha left music behind in the mid-1980s for a different life, which in this evidence suggests the jazz scene lost a great one.

Review: Ambient composer and improviser Tom Leclerc shares a series of moments with WILD in which the pair experiment and go off grid in their search for immersive ambient sounds. All of the session for this album on Giraffe Tape sharpened in the same day with a stripped back studio set up featuring minimalist synths and pedals. Both artist's own restive sounds meet in a new world where distant cosmic winds gently blow over pastural chord sequences. There is subtle movement in these tracks, some of which are darker and heavier than others which have more light, hope and joy.

Review: Isle Of Jura's latest on-point release is a new edition of Zann's sought-after 1990 set "Strange Ways/Inside Jungle", a self-released album of experimental, left-of-centre musical fusions produced in the band's basement studio in Dortmund. The record's genius lies in the band's mixture of Eno/Byrne style ambient motifs, delay-laden electronic beats, densely layered African and South American percussion sounds and chiming instruments from South East Asia. There are some suitably trippy tricks employed here and there - backwards vocals, layered field recordings and so on - but also snaking sax lines and cheery synthesizer melodies. In other words, it's an inspired, hard-to-pigeonhole album that just gets better with each successive listen.