Artist.......: Jef Stott
Album........: Saracen
Label........: Six Degrees Records
Genre........: Electronic
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: May-03-2008
str.date.....: 000-00-0000
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: www.jefstott.com
track title time
01. Lamast (Miami Mix) 06:17
02. Sono (Album Version) 05:32
03. Ashk 05:46
04. Saracen (Eye of Horus Vocal Mix) 05:16
05. Medina Stepper 04:33
06. Faqir 04:49
07. Axis (Evolve) 07:35
08. Overland 07:00
09. Blissm'lah (Darkuba Re-Mix) 06:48
10. Aegean Dub 05:11
Runtime 58:47 min
Size 78,8 MB
Release Notes:
Saracen is the first full-length solo recording
from Jef Stott, and it's about time. Stott has
been on the global music scene for over a decade,
helping to found the bands Stellamara and Lumin and
producing records by the Tunisian-born MC RAI and
the Persian fusion group Somma, among others. He
released last year's SoukSonik, an EP, on Six
Degrees' digital-only Emerging Artists series, but
with his convincing blend of Middle Eastern and
North African instruments and rhythms with modern
dance music, Stott "emerged" fairly quickly. The
EP charted heavily on CMJ and Jazziz, and a busy
live touring schedule in Japan, Canada, Los
Angeles, and Miami helped set the stage, finally,
for his solo debut.
Stott began as an experimental guitarist in Los
Angeles, but his work with Stellamara, a group that
blended Balkan and Middle Eastern music with Dead
Can Dance-style rock, inspired him to take up a
serious study of the Arab lute, or oud. Moving to
San Francisco in the mid-90s, Stott sold his guitar
and spent several years studying with
internationally known masters like the late Hamza
El Din, and the Turkish virtuoso Omar Faruk
Tekbilek among others. "Eventually," he recalls,
"the electronics started creeping back in, and I
became a bit more of who I was before. But I was
still listening to a lot of Arab and Middle Eastern
music all the time." The result was Stott's
now-signature mix of electronica and Middle Eastern
music; he became a sought after producer and
remixer, and eventually founded his own label,
Embarka Records.
All of which had him more than ready to do
something solo. "I'd been producing bands for over
10 years," Stott explains, "and I just really
wanted to do something on my own. I'm really
enjoying the freedom and the mobility of a solo
project." Of course, "solo" doesn't mean "unaided"
û one of the most striking features of Saracen is
the appearance of some swirling vocals, in Arabic
and Persian, by MC RAI, Reda Darwish, and Hooman
Fazly. But Stott himself plays most of the
instruments: the oud, of course, but also the
Turkish lutes known as saz and cumbus, the Persian
santur (a hammered dulcimer), the electric bass,
and lots of hand percussion.
Stott's approach to world music actually comes from
an academic background. Stott received a degree in
Anthropology, and wrote ethnographies about the
cultures of Turkey and Morocco. "It really
affected the way I think about music," he says.
"Not just the usual questions of the West
'borrowing' from the East, but influences going the
other way too. I got to thinking about what a
truly global music would sound like." That would
explain the sound of the track "Sono," where Stott
immediately announces his musical intentions: the
funky groove is comprised of a whomping synth bass,
near Eastern dumbek (a clay drum), and drum
programming. But there are some telling moments of
Latin timbale effects, and the melody spins out on
both the oud and Turkish clarinet. Samples of the
piercing, nasal reed instruments of North Africa
and the Near East add a distinctive touch, both
here and elsewhere on the record.
Four of the songs on Saracen originally appeared on
Stott's Emerging Artist digital-only EP. But Jef
re- recorded and reworked them, adding new
performances and programming to each. On the title
track, the Persian vocals and the ney flute soar
over dubbed out electronic programming. The
percussion programming is heavy on the dumbek at
first, giving it a timeless quality despite the
obvious Western production; then it becomes
increasingly electronic until the oud enters,
playing the melody, and once again throwing into
question what tradition this music comes from.
Indian percussion, especially the hand drums known
as tabla, has become a familiar sound in modern
dance music; but Stott suggests that other parts of
the world have as much to offer. "I definitely
think Middle Eastern percussion is right up there
with the Indian, West African and Brazilian
traditions," he says. "It can be really virtuosic
and fantastically musical." "Faqir," for example,
is based on an ancient Egyptian rhythm called zaar,
which is meant to ward off evil. "The zaar is
there at the very end,"Stott reveals; "it's a
trancy Sufi rhythm that's the basis of the whole
song, but after I built the piece on top of it, I
removed most of the original rhythm." What's left
is a wash of electronic sounds and a mix of
implacable drums and skirling reeds that brings to
mind Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," or one of Peter
Gabriel's albums from the 1980s.