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Ilyas Ahmed : Towards The Night (PAK/US, 2006)****°
Ilyas Ahmed is a Pakistani born guitarist, who was first based in Portland and has now more recently moved to Oregon. This release especially surprised me as a revelation and a great discovery. There are four (longer) tracks on this extremely limited selfreleased cdr, of which "Circular Sky" is a beautiful eternal, introspective, melancholic melodic fingerpicking spin. "Satanta's Hand" starts slower and more minimally, as if searching and yearning, with major harmonizing resonating tones forming a creatively developing melody with minor contradictive resonances, in one raga-like process of development. It builds up thoroughly and evolves further until flames of chords are added over the pickings, almost burning the melodic flavour with oxygen, until the composition ends like it started, calm and introspective, masterly done ! "Golden Eyes" is a complex rhythmic-melodic fingerpicking track, like an inner breathing meditative, enflamed idea. After a long meditation it suddenly stops. "Shumsun" is a last raga-like track in direction of some of the more known new guitarists who also made raga-like guitar meditations. Very good !!
private Ilyas Ahmed : Between two skies (PAK/US, 2005)*°°
This earlier release is very different in style. It’s darker and sadder, in a late-night-blues-mood. It is multi-layered and recorded on a 4-track, with guitars (acoustic and electric), with background voice mooing and some piano and percussion textures. I like especially the second half of “To you soon/silence the high”, with a hypnotic percussive rhythm that carries the acoustic guitar picking repetitions, and with some portion of backward-electric guitar. By the time of the last track, “Samanjhna”, the vagueness of this track, in the context of the whole album-going even more into the direction of some of the CDR-related freefolk releases of some limited edition labels- it became a bit too much for me, putting me, sighing, to sleep. There were good moments here, but I don’t think Ilyas talent comes to the fore much yet with this kind of a more vaguely spherical approach. But I'm sure it will be appreciated fully by those who like directions from label musicyourmindwilloveyou, or that like especially the Brad Rose related groups.
private Ilyas Ahmed : Yahan Dur Wahan (PAK/US,2006)***°
“100 Veils” is stylistically in the direction of a quiet Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho or Peter Walker,.. in a calm and modest way. Also “Descend Again” is built upon a comparable introspective guitar; it also has additional ambient improvisational high pitched vocals. The moody guitars spinning are built up further, and are brought one step further onto the next track, "1000 lights", slowly creating its own personal mantra/raga form. Last track, "Suddenly expected" is a similar guitar picking mood with vocal textures, similar to the second track. This last track sounds nice too, but betrays some recycled patterns and ideas, which makes perhaps only this last track a bit long and too stretched. Still a very nice album. (Limited to 200 cdrs with carton board sleeves).
Time-Lag Rec. Ilyas Ahmed : Century of Moonlight (PAK/US,2006)***'
This is another album of Ilyas which is entirely depending on a mood. “Softly,tomorrow” is music built upon a specific sphere, with sadly droning harmonium, some spinning wheel-of-life vocals, acoustic guitars, and cymbal-vibrations of percussion, an intro for a meditation in sadness. Also “Red Spring” goes into this solo sadness, with a minor key fingerpicking repetition, and with introverted vocals, hardly communicating, as if dissolved in all its awareness, as an ‘expression which is not yet able to be expressed’, absorbed in its not-finding-a-place-to-be, waiting. Small temple bells makes this lonely sadness more acceptable, as if they are part of an inner nature of a spiritual desire: it becomes something peaceful, until some darker, echoing semi-acoustic noise on the background shows its opposite pole, with a creeping inner unrest, of slightly mechanical percussive sounds in the spatial dimensions, standing for a reality with less easy conditions from the environment. After a while these additional percussive sounds start to create a life on their own. The next track, "Your One Mind" sounds structured like a song without real words (?), based upon an intuitive emotional mood, formed by repetitive patterns on guitars and percussion. Also "The Gathering" starts very intuitively. On an ambient bed of experimental, stretched and echoing sounds. a guitar piece appears. Various additional voices seem to express something like sad ghosts over water. This track is entirely improvisational, and ends with some additional guitar and harmonica further on. After some similarities of patterns on "Seen through", also the last track, "Khabi Ma Boley Ashista", with harmonium, guitar and voice, is built up so much in a similar way, the repeated method of mood-building begins to show some limitations (ie.predictability). A sad, moody album, limited to 222.
will be expected for 2006 : the LP Ilyas Ahmed's LP 'the vertigo of dawn’ on Time-Lag
