Last year, Sam Shalabi and Stefan Christoff released their sublime debut LP, Rodina. The album featured four outstanding tracks that expand musically on a dialogue spiraling somewhere between Cairo and Canada. It’s language was explored using both oud and piano, which embellished the incredible textures and depth within the music.
Shalabi, an Egyptian composer and musician, recorded Rodina with Christoff in his home town of Montreal, and in the winter months of 2014 they came together once again to assemble their followup.
It’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to premiere “Flying Street,” which is a delicate, yet poignant demonstration of how the themes explored within the artists’ conversations evolve. Reflections on identity, the feeling of belonging, of isolation, of seclusion, are all apparent here as they merge between the foreground and the distance, like a mirage cast by smoke, envisaged through the mirror of the mind’s eye.
The as-of-yet untitled album will be launched in July at Casa del Popolo in Montreal. It was recorded at La Sala Rossa concert hall in Quebec, by Adrian Roy Taylor.
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