Maurice Louca - Saet El Hazz (The Luck Hour) '2021

Tracks list

Maurice Louca, one of the most gifted musicians and composers on Egypts thriving
underground music scene, announces his new album Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour),
to be released September 24, 2021 via Sub Rosa and Northern Spy.
The forthcoming full-length album draws voraciously on Arabic music, psychedelic
folk, and free improv and the lead single “Bidayat (Holocene)”
mesmerises with a feral groove centered around percussion, guitar and violin.
The title Saet el Hazz is a coded saying in Egypt to refer to a good time and
usually implies a great deal of debauchery. “When you mention to someone
that you’ve had a saet hazz, there are no questions asked. It is what it
is.”
The initial spark for Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) was Louca’s desire to
collaborate with “A” Trio, the Lebanese improvisational group
featuring Mazen Kerbaj on prepared trumpet, Sharif Sehnaoui on prepared guitar,
and Raed Yassin on prepared double bass. “When the three of them come
together they create a sonic cosmos entirely their own. I started by composing
music that I wanted to have exist within this sonic world— at times in
harmony, or clashing with it, and all the emotional ranges in between.”
Just as “A” Trio served as the spark, a commission from Mophradat,
an arts organization based out of Brussels, was the tinder. The commission was
for a new composition to be performed using instruments that Louca would modify
to play microtonally. This led him to Turkey and Indonesia. In Istanbul, he
worked with a Lutheran to custom-make a guitar. In Surakarta, he ended up with
an instrument maker tuning a Serang—referred to as the Indonesian
xylophone, part of the family of Gamelan tuned percussion instruments.
These new modified instruments opened up the compositions to new tonal
possibilities which drove Louca to expand his line up to include Khaled Yassine,
a longtime collaborator and versatile percussionist and drummer, Christine
Kazaryan, a dynamic harpist whom he met via Praed Orchestra, and Anthea Caddy, a
cellist who came highly recommended from the Berlin free improv scene.
“There is something about linking luck to decadence that resonates with
me, and even if I cant fully articulate it in words, the drive behind the music
of this album and how it came to be, and the energy between us at the studio
rehearsing and recording it, was in a lot of ways for me a saet hazz.”
Saet El Hazz (The Luck Hour) is a long form composition of six movements,
recorded over the course of a week in August 2019 at A/B studios in Brussels. 

Composed, arranged and produced by Maurice Louca

Mazen Kerbaj - Trumpet/Electronics
Sharif Sehnaoui - Guitar
Raed Yassin - Double Bass
Anthea Caddy - Cello
Christine Kazaryan - Harp
Khaled Yassine - Percussions/Gamelan
Maurice Louca - Guitar

Tracklist:
1.01 - Maurice Louca - El-Fazzaah (The Slip and Slide) (10:21)
1.02 - Maurice Louca - Bidayat (Holocene) (4:23)
1.03 - Maurice Louca - Yara (Fire Flies) (4:19)
1.04 - Maurice Louca - Saet El Hazz (The Luck Hour) (8:31)
1.05 - Maurice Louca - El-Gullashah (Foul Tongue) (4:16)
1.06 - Maurice Louca - Higamah (Hirudinea) (6:12)

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