Tarab (CD)

In a handful of improvised albums circumnavigating the troubled waters of the contemporary Mediterranean—Greece, with the eponymous Oiseaux-Tempête (2013), Turkey and Sicily for ÜTOPIYA? (2015), Lebanon with Al-'An! (2017)—the collective Oiseaux-Tempête has stretched its electric arc over musicalgenres and borders, imposing itself in a river of tours and releases like a wild UFO within the hexagonal indie scene. Navigating instinct, as attracted by disorder, the music of Oiseaux-Tempête has always increased tenfold in live performance. It is little surprise that following the remixes album (Re-Works, 2014) and collection of B Sides (Unworks & Rarities, 2016), Oiseaux-Tempête unveils, by way of a new opus, an album entirely recorded in concert.
Tarab (in literary arabic – euphoria, secular exaltation, ecstasy) is the result of live recordings captured during the Al-'An! tour which led the group, after a preliminary residency at l'Autre Canal in Nancy, to cross Europe and into Canada, performing at the prestigious festival Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, opening for Suuns & Jerusalem In My Heart in Montreal and Toronto, following the same Jerusalem In My Heart through France then from Brussels to Berlin, and finally closing the loop at the Irtijal festival in Beirut. A record, rooted in the soil, hypnotic in pulsation, Tarab is a meeting of the Parisian founding members Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul, electronic sound wizard Mondkopf, G.W.Sok from The Ex, Sylvain Joasson of Mendelson, videographers As Human Pattern and the Lebanese musicians Charbel Haber, Abed Kobeissy and Ali El Hout (aka Two Or The Dragon). The studio pieces are here stretched, deconstructed and rearranged while new works from the road, poems Grasse Matinée by Jacques Prévert and Tuesday And The Weather Is Clear by Mahmoud Darwish, find unique musical settings, weaved, twisted and reimagined.
It is in symbiosis, in the fever and visceral experimentation of the concert, that the musicians of Oiseaux-Tempête seek rapture. Arranged in a semicircle, they invoke the elements and attempt the catharsis, inviting the spectator to spiral with them, entwined in the sonic explosions, finding beauty and peace in the spaces of improvisation and elaboration. Marrying free-rock, organic electronics, traditional instruments and unbridled electricity, Tarab, far beyond the vibrant testimony, is a generous invitation to experience, to meditate and to share.