Label: Holidays Records

廃盤!!素晴らしい試み&高い完成度の一枚!!Holidays Recordsの偉業!!エジプトの都市アレクサンドリア出身、ヴァイオリニストでありマルチ楽器演奏家ナンシー・ムニールによるデビューアルバム[Nozhet El Nofous]。本作は20世紀初頭のエジプトで活躍した名歌手たちのアーカイブ録音との音楽的対話を試みた作品であり、なんと自身の演奏をオリジナルの録音に重ねる形にてオーバーダブを行った面白い発想の録音物。古びた録音の隙間に入り込むかの様にアラブ音楽における自由奔放な技法を展開、テクスチャーそのままに驚異的な美しさをキープした傑作盤。英/アラビア語の歌詞を掲載した8ページのブックレット付き。









Includes an 8-page booklet with lyrics in English and Arabic. Nancy Mounir’s debut album, Nozhet El Nofous, is a remarkable communion with ghosts. Moody, hypnotic, and sneakily catchy, the album - whose title means “Promenade of the Souls'' in Arabic - explores microtonality, non-metered rhythms, and bold vulnerability through a musical dialogue between Mounir’s own arrangements and the sounds of archival recordings of once-famed singers from Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. Adding her own ambient arrangements over voices haunted with passion and desire as she creates a sound that is warmly familiar but utterly new.

On the album, Mounir slips into the gaps left by the lost frequencies of the aging recordings, finding space for counterpoint and harmony in a traditional sound built on monophony. Elegant melodies unfold in measured gestures as Mounir - who plays most of the instruments herself -revels in the plaintive intonations and brash lyrics of the departed singers. With layers enmeshed together, it’s at times hard to pin down when the past ends and the present begins, but beneath it all is a liberating attitude of defiance that feels timeless.

Nozhet El Nofous is brilliant in the way it explores the techniques and perspectives of a more freewheeling time period in Arabic music, before Arabic maqam (modal systems) and other musical foundations were standardized by the Middle East’s cultural power brokers in the early 1930s. As she summons a rich, atmospheric landscape of tone and texture, Mounir engages an older generation of musical rebels in a creative dialogue across time and space - and the results are stunning in their ambition and beauty.

Mixed by Adham Zidan. Mastered by Heba Kadry. Remastered for vinyl by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio. Artwork by Egyptian filmmaker and photographer Ahmad Abdalla, with original typography and design by Salma Shamel. Lyrics translation by Katharine Halls.