open strings: early virtuoso recordings from the middle east v/a (honest jon’s)

only just now found the time to give this beast the full attention it so deservedly deserves.

four lps, stylishly sleeved and contained in a rigid slipcase.  the artwork all monochromatic loveliness, woodcuts by katharina immekus.  beautiful in every fetishy packaged way possible.  lovely to look but to listen to?

a freaking joy.  mastered at abbey road.  all cleaned up and frequently sounding brand spanking new.  hard to believe that some of this is ninety years old.

so it’s another trawl through emi hayes 78’s archives for honest jon’s.  this time turning their wayward ears to the middle east; iraq, iran, egypt and turkey.  this time drawing parallels between stringed improv back then and the modern made-up exotica of yr sir richard bishops and michael flowers and six organs of admittance, featuring as it does these fellows alongside mv & ee and steffan basho-jungans and others offering their take on the old world.

essentially it’s string-ed virtuosity across time and continents and cultures.  yet somehow all leading to the same place.  see sir richard’s recent freak of araby record.  so lots of the old stuff seems oddly new and musically prescient, strangely resonant, ancient yet timeless.  i’d say transcendent but i use that word way too much.  what there are links between the psychedelic, the spiritual, the harmonies, tendrils snaking out over the decades squirming under the skin of drone and psych and folk and all that other shit i love.

mainly played on oud or santour or spike fiddle the archive finds are a goddam marvel.  doing for this kind of free arabic folk what harry smith did for the americans back when.  obviously not as far reaching or comprehensive as the anthology but as a focused starting point, a narrowed introduction to music that in all likelihood would have festered alone and unlistened somewhere this is a remarkable collection.

dazzling, melodic, inventive, frantic, refined, intricate.  could be describing the bishops ouvre or basho or blackshaw or chasny.  instead i’m talking about abdul hussein khan shahnazi and nechat bey and sami chawa.

working with those middle eastern tones and modes and chucking into the mad mix an occasional bit of surf and electornickerry are the new kids on the block.  some obviously drawing on the originals for inspiration, others mixing it up with their usual shit and the rest using it as nothing more than an inspirational springboard.

words can’t do it justice.  anyone with more than a passing interest in the sublime frequencies back catalogue or as mentioned before the new srb record ought to check this out.  as important a historical document as it is a musical one.  and ridiculously reasonably priced to boot.

limited to 1000 copies.  hurry!

honest jon’s

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