MAWJA
“Studio one”

Michael Bullock (contrabass & feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet) and Vic Rawlings (cello & surface electronics). “One strike isn’t enough. This album struck me like a big wave, a wave that makes you lose your consciousness and equilibrium for several minutes, leaving you wondering what just happened to you during this elusive lapse of time. Probably this is exactly the purpose of this trio, where as their music draws rust from your very skin, suburban rust, from those big suburbs where the individual melts, and all individuality is melted by the heavy burden that eats all. The sound ate the self, ate the collective, ate time, and invaded space. I wasn’t expecting such a radical treatment of sound. The music here goes out of time, depriving it of its value despite the usual ties that link time and music as an art form. What we hear is rather a strong binding with space, using it as a compositional tool. This music does not move, but it wanders like blocks of colours or shapes in the empty. The reunion of Bullock, Rawlings and Kerbaj for this recording leaves no possibilities for any future; it is a meeting of the here and now, like the musical result that is released with this recording. The Present time is simultaneously constructed and deconstructed, making the “now quality” predominant on the atmosphere of this record. The unified sound of the trio fills the air like a short-wave radio signal, carrying its usual load of small marginal details; a sound that resembles music or walks by it without remorse, not stopping at any station along the way. Three musicians, both friends and enemies, yet above all partners of this same game, where there are no rules for improvising; one erases the other, without regret, for the sake of unity in sound.” Raed Yassin, Beirut, March 2007.