Customer Reviews

The Astounding Eyes of Rita

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(1)
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This is simply incredibly beautiful music. Never mind the genre labels (it's ECM after all) - there are elements of jazz, Arabic music and classical chamber music contained here...but most of all, this is at its heart music from the human soul, and Anouar Brahem's most personal recording in several years...maybe ever. I say `personal' because on this recording you can hear Anouar voicing melodic lines along with his oud playing - not overbearing, not loud, not singing words...but quietly, gently, underscoring the deep source of these pieces. The original music is the voice, after all.

Anouar is accompanied here by three wonderful, sensitive performers - Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet), Björn Meyer (bass, from Nik Bärtsch's Ronin) and Khaled Yassine (darbouka, bender). The four players blend seamlessly into the musical streams that Brahem has composed for this release - they send forth sinuous lines that parallel one moment and intertwine in delicate harmony and counterpoint and rhythm the next. There's not a weak track in the lot - it's one of those discs I know I'll be playing multiple times at each sitting.

Stylistically, the music here falls somewhere between Brahem's last albums (such as the achingly lovely LE PAS DU CHAT NOIR (2002) and THIMAR (1998), with echoes of the more traditionally Arabic music of his early releases tossed into the mix. It's an incredible recording - a good place to start experiencing his work for those who have never heard him, and an essential addition to the collection of those who are already fans.

Until this album, the recordings of Tunisian oudist Anouar Brahem have not interested me, mainly because of the typical subdued, almost minimal ECM sound. I prefer more lively oud taqasim and Western-like improvisations. In "The Astounding Eyes of Rita," Brahem is teamed with three other musicians (Blaus Gesing, Björn Meyer, and Khaled Yassine, playing bass clarinet, bass viol, and bendir and darbouka drums, and the mood is brighter. The rich interplay among the musicians is very fine. The result is an album of quiet beauty, yearning, and fond remembrance. There is a sweetness in this ensemble's music. The album can be compared to those with jazz Lebanese oudist Rabih Abou-Khalil, also produced by ECM's Manfred Eicher, but Brahem's music dances more lightly. A recasting of the classical Arab takht ensemble into a contemporary jazz group, this lovely and memorable album offers great listening for world music and jazz fan alike.

Anouar Brahem has become one of ECM's all-time great recording artists. The Astounding Eyes of Rita continues his stream of wildly diverse releases, this time with a new ensemble that again melds European instruments and sensibility with North African traditional instruments and harmonic ideas.

On this album, there is a unique combination of lower-register instruments -- the oud, contrabass and bass clarinet together occupy a fairly narrow band and reinforce each other. There are more dynamic rhythmic ideas here than on Brahem's last two (superb) albums of Islamo-European art music; those records were slow, dreamy and impressionistic. The Astounding Eyes of Rita has a livelier pulse.

The album is also superbly recorded. One of Brahem's best!

One of the great joys of being Anouar Brahem fan is that you can always regard any upcoming album of his as a "must buy" no matter what instrumentalists he's collaborating with. If I knew his next album was a collaboration with a bagpipe player, a trombonist, and a beat-box player - I'd still buy it. Brahem is devoted to detailing a beautiful melody with precision and contemplation, and the players on his albums all use minimal instrumentation to maximum effect. Modulation is never taken for modulation's sake - which is not something that can be said for many, many jazz artists.

On "The Astounding Eyes of Rita", Brahem and his group continue developing a music firmly in between jazz and chamber music. Perhaps this album is a bit more jazz than chamber music - unlike the last two albums, but like "Thimar"... and yet, this album feels very different from "Thimar"Thimar in that it has an even stronger ensemble feel than that album. Let me just walk you through this beautiful album.

The opening track, "The Lover of Beirut," is a langorous track beginning and ending with what I can only describe as a chime on the guitar. The oud and clarinet play in unison, tracing out a typical Brahem Easternish melody with exquisite care. "Dance with Waves" is a short jazz track making good use of the bass player, and a perfect blend of the sanguine and the phlegmatic moods that characterize this album. "Stopover at Djibouti" is one of my favorite pieces. It's very light on its feet and its simple but quick tune is so sunny that it feels miles away from most everything on "Le Pas du Chat Noir". There is a moment in the middle when the clarinet cuts out, the opening guitar chime returns, and the clarinet softly returns in a high register with a delicate phrase - it is true beauty. "The Astounding Eyes of Rita" (the title track) starts with a pensive oud solo (accompanied with minimal wordless vocals by Brahem), but then shifts to a sauntering quasi-bossa nova rhythm (Rita?). It is a more melancholic piece but exhibits the virtuosity and emotional maturity we've come to expect from Brahem and his players. "Galilee Mon Amour" is likewise a rather melancholy piece built on an unusual rhythm and some great drum playing, not as interesting to me as the title track, but still excellent, interesting music.

"Waking State" is a slow piece with some beautiful oud playing (in unison with clarinet at times) over held tones from the guitar (clarinet later). Thinking about the title of the song, I'm left with the impression of the pondering you might do when you wake up but you don't have to be anywhere very soon. "For No Apparent Reason" returns the album to a sanguine mood with some clever interactive playing among the musicians.

It is about the third album that I hear from this fabulous musician, the music is highly meditative and pleasurable and one can easily find oneself riding camels on a desert dune .The sound of oud and darbouka is great .a pleasant journey for a change from Beirut to Djibouti via the Galilee, inshallah! loved it!

My introduction to the music of Anouar Brahem came several years ago when I chanced to hear Astrakan Cafe. I liked and bought that as well as other Brahem recordings in the succeeding years. But I hadn't thought of him recently until I read several very positive reviews of The Astounding Eyes of Rita in the music press.
Like other Anouar Brahem recordings I own, this one is intensely relaxing. While it isn't the best Brahem recording I own, there are a few very good atmospheric pieces here. The best one in my opinion is definitely the title cut. But there are also a couple of others that rank with some of the best that Brahem has recorded. Those are The Lover of Beirut and Galilee Mon Amour.
As usual with ECM recordings, this CD comes very tastefully packaged and is accompanied by an attractive yet almost spartan booklet containing pictures, album info, and a poem by the late poet Mahmoud Darwish that quite possibly inspired the name of the album and to whom it is dedicated. Check this out, if you enjoy previous albums from Anouar Brahem you are almost certain to enjoy this as well.

This a great album by one of the masters. Arent we so lucky to live in the time we do & to have the chance to hear wonderful music like this?

Anouar Brahem is simply put, one of the finest musician/composers alive in the world today. His creations are sublime. Quietly intense, meditative, spontaneous, yet deliberate without any wasted notes or phrases. Anyone interested in serious modern music of exquisite beauty should at least have his last three albums, period. In a world full of 'stuff', here is an artist that remains unclutttered, and focused on his muse. Playing the Turkish oud, combining; piano, accordian, wind instruments, bass, percussion instruments, over the past two decades, Anouar has created a wonderful, essential discography that is continually evolving.

The Astounding Eyes of Rita works well because the musicians seem to effortlessly fall into the type of heightened state of awareness where skill and telepathy blend, and they channel their shared vision through their instruments. It is as though composer and oud player (oudist?) Anouar Brahem, bassist Björn Meyer, clarinetist Klaus Gesing, and percussionist Khaled Yassine have always been playing these songs, a collection of instrumental numbers grounded in traditional sounds but rendered with modern conventions.

These songs offer swift passage to flights of fancy as they encourage one's thoughts to drift yet stimulate the senses (as in a dream): a swirling sirocco, beams of sunlight, gently lapping water, strange spices, the friction of jute are all hiding in here somewhere.

The Astounding Eyes of Rita has got to be one of the most beautiful recordings of acoustic instrumental music I've heard in my life! I've had the CD now for over three weeks and since it's been in my possession I've listened to little else. I compare "...Rita" with Shakti's Natural Elements and the David Grisman Quintet (first recording). This is instrumental music of an incredibly high caliber, and yet to write that doesn't do justice to the haunting quality of the music. Though I compared them favorably with the aforementioned groups, Anouar Brahem's ensemble burns with a quiet fire; make no mistake there is muscularity to this music but it is sinew of an ethereal matrix.

Honestly, I don't know how to stop listening to it. Each time I think I should unplug from it before I burn out on it another week has gone by and I'm still immersed in it, and I have 36 days of music on my ipod. Part of the reason could be that I'm a musician and Brahem's muse is just so enchanting. I find it impossible to listen to this album as background music. More than once I've had visitors who had a hard time engaging me if "...Rita" was playing.

My favorite pieces are Stopover at Djibouti, Al Birwa, Galilee Mon Amour, and of course the title track. Each of these pieces is captivating and lingers in the mind long after you hear them. This is music of the spirit, and of the heart. Don't miss it.