southern records

In the beginning there was nothing, and Sam Shalabi (aka Land Of Kush) said "let there be filter sweeps". Reminiscent of the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, voices join, rising and falling against the dense anti-matter of swirling electronics thus giving rise to a more analogous crescendo, reaching its peak and slowly subsiding. The synths become droning backdrops for a majestical Egyptian flute, the rising and falling notes of which have the capacity to lure those with it in their nature into a dreamy state. This state, now interrupted by a complex multi-layered percussion composition, is a theme touched upon not only by this record but also by its name sake, the novel Against The Day by American author Thomas Pynchon.

The album isn't entirely caught up in the teachings of the ancient Egyptian mystery schools and the challenging cosmic free jazz of Sun Ra. The line "Is this your first time swimming, did you pass your swimming test in a life vest" stands as a monolith of strangely surreal humour in the midst of a deeply esoteric sounding album, acting to pull everything straight back to the modern day for a brief moment. Elsewhere the album keeps its theme of compositions sculptured from the same stone as late Nasser-era Egypt, aside from the somewhat operatic prog leanings of title track "Against The Day" with its deployment of a post-rock galloping, snare drum and squealing King Crimson sax and clarinet. The fall-out of the explosive ending of "Against The Day" bleeds into "Rue du Départ", which intuition tells me would translate roughly to 'road of the departure', suiting for the fiery doomsday finale full of free jazz drumming and tortured searching on behalf of the orchestra to find an appropriate cadence to an other wise undefinable collection of movements. This debut album will be released on Constellation.