Anouar Brahem: After the Last Sky

Although ECM Records has released straight-ahead jazz, free form and more, many of their recordings sweep over listeners with mysterious, ethereal and hypnotic sounds creating alluring siren calls. When those sessions are taking place with an ECM release on the horizon, it is easy to imagine the artists are thinking about 'where's the mystery?'—which is what Anouar Brahem seemed to focus on this time around.

Brahem, a revered Tunisian-born master of the oud (the fretless stringed instrument with origins in the Middle East) has been affiliated with the prestigious record label since it released his first album in the early 1990s. Although Brahem is designated as the leader on After the Last Sky, the symbiotic balance between the four protagonists is evident from start to finish. The group reverently melds world music with the spirit of traditional Arabic sounds and swirls them together with improvisational jazz. They cross geographic barriers and craft subdued sounds as they collectively and individually express themselves sans lyrics.

Although the pieces were composed in the summer of 2023, the recording took place in May of 2024, several months after the devastating attack on Israel followed by the invasion of the Gaza Strip. Due to the flood of headline news focused on destruction, poverty, famine, genocide, ethnic cleansing and more—the collection is essentially "a work of instrumental music without words," with a plea to remember. The quartet was very much focused on engaging the listener vs. "directing" them as they cast light on the chaos erupting in the Middle East (and, by default, throughout countless other flashpoints around the world.) Due to the artists' concerns about the Gaza conflicts, you might expect musical eruptions of explosive turbulence and sonic chaos, but the group, unexpectedly, takes the opposite approach. A simple yet elegant piano on "Remembering Hind"—as played by Django Bates with sublime help from violoncello's Anja Lechner—opens things up and invites us to join the group for an intimate, serene session. Although drums and percussion are absent this time around, the revered elder bassist Dave Holland consistently provides a guiding path through many of the selections. As noted in the liner notes, the musicians present chamber music of "undertones and whispers" and judiciously reveal the "silence between the notes." Each piece gently flows into the next as they craft melancholic, pensive works. Brahem allows Lechner's cello to lead the way through other numbers including "Awake," with its measured pace. "Vague," the composition that brings the album to a close, is yet another delicate mood piece that quietly delivers a sad farewell on this heartfelt requiem. You are left with a sense that, after all the destruction and death, there is the hazy dust of destroyed concrete structures and death silently lingering in the sky. Ironically, there is a missing person on this final track—Brahem.

You may never see the shadows or the ghosts of the thousands of people the four musicians alluded to but this quartet—at the very least—urges you to remember the over 60,0000 dead (and counting.) In addition, they urge you to think about something else—the 'eternal olive tree' or the 'sweet oranges,' referenced in two of the album's pieces, and about the thousands of people who will never experience those or other small pleasures again.

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