playlist

21.10.2024

My name is Abdullah Miniawy – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me at the moment is a heaven for non-believers.«

Abdullah Miniawy (born 1994) is an Egyptian expressionist, a writer, singer, composer, and actor. Over the years, he has shared the stage with acclaimed artists such as Erik Truffaz, Kamilya Jubran, Yom, Médéric Collignon, Aly Talibab, A Filetta, Hvad, Ziur, Simo Cell, and many others. Miniawy's performances have graced prestigious international stages and venues, including the Festival d’Avignon edition 72, French national theaters, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Haus Der Kunst museum in Munich, Mao Asian Museum in Turin, even the Louvre in Paris.

In addition to his music career, Abdullah proved his natural acting talent in Alaadine Slim's Tlamess, a Tunisian feature film featured at the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Miniawy was also recognized with a nomination and shortlisting for the Best Actor Award from the Arab Cinema Center at Cannes.

As a composer, Miniawy has created different soundtracks for dance shows, theater productions, and exhibitions, including notable works like Cabaret Crusade III by Wael Shawki premiered at Moma PS1, AMDUAT by Kirsten Dehlholm premiered at Hotel Pro Forma, and Insurrection by Jilani Saadi.

Abdullah Miniawy's influence extends beyond the arts; he was selected by the European Parliament in Strasbourg as one of three change makers from the Schengen area to offer a French-Egyptian artist's perspective on pressing contemporary challenges at the European Youth Event 2021 in the Live Fully section. He also participated in Europe Takes Part, a gathering of 30 diverse speakers discussing new economic models and digital solutions for artists in a post-pandemic world.

Since 2016, Miniawy has collaborated with the German trio Carl Gari, blending avant-garde electronic soundscapes with poetic lyrics. Their debut album, Darraje, was recognized as one of the top 50 albums of 2016 by the American NPR. Their recent release, The Act of Falling from the 8th Floor, garnered attention from Pitchfork, The Quietus, and Wire Magazine, with Zawaj ranking at the top of Resident Advisor's list of Deep Listening tracks in 2019.

Most recently, Abdullah's album Le Cri Du Caire, featuring Erik Truffaz, won Les Victoires du Jazz 2023 award – the French equivalent of the Grammy Awards.

As a writer, his lyrics have left a mark in the Middle East region, notably during the Arab Spring, where they were displayed in places like the Yarmouk camp in Syria.

in briefrelease

29.09

Drums of Dissent

Maria Faust Sacrum Facere: »Marches Rewound and Rewritten«

Stunt Records, 09.05

Seb Doubinsky

With her latest album, saxofonist and composer Maria Faust has put the political at the center of jazz, in the long tradition of Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Charlie Haden, Fred Frith and Tom Cora, just to name a few. What is surprising is her choice of genre, marches, which is not a per se a traditional jazz form. If Charles Mingus, for instance, payed his tribute to New Orleans marching bands, Faust’s choice is definitely antagonistic. The marches she manipulates and destroys from the inside are not of the entertaining sort, unless you’re a general, as they are of the military and nationalistic kind.

Faust’s score would be a perfect fit for plays like Alphonse Allais’s Père Ubu and Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Ascension of Arturo Ui, in its use of the grotesque as a creative driving force. Faust’s genius however doesn’t lie in turning these marches into farcical circus fanfares, but in creating a truly threatening space within the music, through chaos but also heart-breaking dissonances, which could be heard as a reminiscence of the wailers mourning their dead fallen in the war. Her fairly large ensemble – seven musicians, plus herself – which is composed of six horns and two drums/percussion creates a perfect harmony-disharmony universe, as if Charles Mingus and Sun Ra had worked together.

Marches Rewound and Rewritten is a seminal and important album which shines darkly in these difficult times and reminds us that everything is political – especially music.

in brief

29.09

A Seedy Hotel Room Becomes the Stage For Lives, Traumas, and Music

Emma O’Halloran, Irish National Opera: »Trade« / »Mary Motorhead«

Signum Records, 15.08

Andrew Mellor

Two chamber operas by Irish composer Emma O’Halloran, both adapted from plays by her uncle, Mark O’Halloran. The first, Trade, is utterly compelling and deeply moving: the story of two men meeting for sex in a grubby hotel room, whose intertwining lives are burdened by trauma and love. The composer writes of the »beautiful economy« in her uncle’s language and the same could be said of her music, which charges the text with more and more tension and urgency without cramping it – but just as often barely registers at all, letting theatre and storytelling rule. The vocal acting is outstanding.

The stylistic resourcefulness of Trade, in which the two characters are so vividly drawn, returns in the monologue Mary Motorhead but with less success. Here, musical sampling can get in the way of our view of the prisoner, who tells of her troubled life before she split her husband’s head open with a knife. Taken with Trade, though, it only emphasizes O’Halloran’s brilliance with theatre and deft musical hand. Would it be too much to hope for one or two truly theatrical, storytelling operas like these in the avant-garde strand of Copenhagen Opera Festival?

in briefrelease

29.09

From Chaos, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten Weaves Musical Patterns

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (Exit) Knarr: »Drops«

Kristoffer Møllegaard

The keyword for this release can already be found in the title of the opening track: »Deluge (deconstructed)«. Here, Håker Flaten takes a Wayne Shorter composition apart like a LEGO set and reassembles it in a way that only occasionally recalls the original. Out of the pieces emerges a short, repetitive guitar motif, around which drums, saxophones, bass, and piano orbit in increasingly fragmented patterns. The melodies gradually become less concrete, the instruments interact less, the intensity rises almost imperceptibly – until everything falls apart and the process begins again. The same approach is used in the third track, »Kanón (for Paal Nilssen-Love)«, where tension and release unfold in waves that propel the music forward. Håker Flaten masters the art of creating dramatic arcs that guide the listener safely through even the most tumultuous passages.

This is not easy listening – we are still in free jazz territory – but there is a strangely compelling balance between chaos and restraint. At first, one is caught by the surprise of the music’s sudden turns, later by the joy of recognition as one begins to sense where the music sharpens and takes shape.

The album closes with »Austin Vibes (tweaked by Karl Hjalmar Nyberg)«, a noisy collage that slowly opens up toward fragments of more conventional horn melodies. Here we get closest to something resembling a classic jazz feeling—and yet not quite. It is still far from easily digestible music. But even when Håker Flaten and his fellow musicians move furthest into fragmentation, they manage to make the difficult-to-understand surprisingly easy to grasp.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease

29.09

When Two Worlds Meet: Bro and Takada In Perfect Listening

Jakob Bro & Midori Takada: »あなたに出会うまで / Until I Met You«

Loveland Music, 12.09

Kristoffer Møllegaard

At last, three years after their concert at the Black Diamond, the collaboration between Danish guitarist Jakob Bro and Japanese percussionist Midori Takada has been released in album format – and it does not disappoint.

Their friendship may seem surprising at first, given their differences, but あなたに出会うまで / Until I Met You reveals how it rests on a shared ability to close their eyes and listen. They give each other space to do what they each do best: Bro’s simple yet refined melodies and Takada’s magical soundscapes. On the title track, Bro sketches the outlines with acoustic guitar and sparse notes, which Takada fills in with shimmering marimba and gong. On A Brief Rest of Sisyphosthe roles are reversed – here Takada sets the frame while Bro adds the details.

The sublime sister pieces Landscape II, Simplicity and Landscape I, Austerity are more abstract than the earlier works. Landscape II breathes hope and longing with resonant chimes and percussion, while a middle section unfolds in melodic harmony between guitar and piano. Landscape I carries the same sense of yearning, but with a more melancholic tone; a gently undulating marimba supports a beautifully moving guitar part. Both pieces radiate a clear sense of respect and tenderness between the musicians: Bro and Takada listen to each other with rare intimacy, and together they have created something truly unique.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in brief

29.09

When Synthesizers Sprout: Filip Leyman’s Organic Debut

Filip Leyman: »Soft Light«

Martin Funder

The forest lake is a cradle of life in more than one sense. The forest’s myriad forms of life depend on its waters, but its trickling branches, intense stillness, and soft reflections also hold powerful musical potential. It is precisely this life-giving energy that forms the basis of Swedish composer Filip Leyman’s solo debut album, Soft Light. From the very first track, »Beyond the Sea«, one senses how Leyman manages to create an organic universe where every sound nourishes the soil for the next. It is difficult to find either beginning or end as the many synthesizers and strings grow into and out of one another – you simply have to surrender and sink into this spherical universe of reverberations and deep, steady bass.

Filip Leyman’s work cannot be described without mentioning Swedish artist Anna von Hausswolff. Her music is like a force of nature, carried by long, sacred organ passages – and what is Hausswolff and what is Leyman is never entirely possible to determine. Soft Light gathers together compositions written over decades and appears as a natural extension of the many albums and soundtracks the two have created together. The album contains a strong cinematic dimension: in a track like »Shapes«, the layered sounds culminate in a dazzling climax that feels like slow motion in sound.

Here, Leyman appears as a musical botanist, patiently letting his synthesizers grow, sprout, and bloom. Although Soft Light has developed over many years, it sounds remarkably cohesive – like one long breath. The album seems more cultivated than composed. Let us hope that Soft Light is only the beginning, and that Leyman will allow more solo albums to grow in the same light.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek