Description

Music to Our Ears is “A” Trio’s second studio album, a record solely focusing on the texture of sounds rather than melodic or rhythmic music.

“Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, bassist Raed Yassin and guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui have developed a cohesive improvisational style founded upon a peculiar blend of isolation and connectedness. No one who comes from one of the centers of improvisational activity (Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, Tokyo) is likely to give their record a name so defensive as "Music to our Ears"; they would have had the chance to play to audiences who long since got past the question of whether a guy generating digeridoo drones and metallic clatter with his partially disassembled trumpet and some tubes is playing music.
The members of “A” Trio, on the other hand, are building their scene in a place with no history of avant-garde music. But they’re hardly naïfs. All three musicians are quite aware of improvisational practice around the world, having performed extensively in the U.S. and the E.U.; both Yassin and Sehnaoui have spent years living in Europe. And since they have a little scene at home to fall back upon, each year since 2000 Sehnaoui and Kerbaj have held a festival named Iritijal that serves both to declare their continued existence and to bring fresh non-Lebanese players to Beirut. But the rest of the year, they play with each other, which explains the coherence "Music to our Ears" displays even when it sounds like each man is elaborating on ideas independent of what the others are doing. Their common ground includes a tendency to deal more with texture than melody and rhythm, and each man can make his acoustic, unamplified instrument sound electronic. [...] The music is generally quite busy, but it never feels like pointless chatter. Rather, it’s purposeful to the point of urgency.”
Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine

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