ARIHA BRASS QUARTET - s/t

Originally released on CD by Beirut based Al Maslakh Recordings in 2015. Mark Corroto about Ariha Brass Quartet in All About Jazz upon its initial release: The practitioners here, three trumpeters Axel Dörner, Franz Hautzinger, Mazen Kerbaj, and Carl Ludwig Hübsch on tuba, practice a unique approach to their instruments. All four musicians set aside a traditional approach to playing, substituting breath for notes, abandoning a mouthpiece, and applying amplification to microscopic sounds. The quartet recorded this session in Beirut 2013. The set opens with Mar Mikhael In The Afternoon , the longest improvisation at 16-plus minutes. The fluttering of notes is accompanied by the snorting of unseen wild beasts and the coyote howls of brass. Their language, developed in the past 20 years or so, is a direct descendant from the European systems and improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Eddie Prevosts AMM, and Paul Rutherford. Stripped of the conventions of noted music, the growls and micro-notes would not be out of place in sci-fi cinema as the backdrop to the silence of an orbiting space station. The squiggles and on/off switches of sounds inhabit the ghosts in the machines of the imagination, but also the rumble and hum of the earths inner core. Hamra Drinks buzzes with the low bass reverberation and the looping notes of trumpet take on an organic biologic shape. Each piece conjures a response be it a visual, an emotional, a fragrance, a flavor, or something tactile. Ahira Brass Quartet opens the listening experience to all five senses." - Discrepant.