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Shalabi Effect

In the world of the Shalabi Effect, Middle-Eastern, European and psychedelic improvisations come together like it was always meant to be like this. With the second album coming out very soon, we felt it was time to fire some questions at one of Montreal's finest.

Tekst: Bas Ickenroth

Publicatiedatum: 01 februari 2002

You released your fantastic, selftitled debut album about a year ago. What has happened to Shalabi Effect since then?
"Well, we toured the US, we had lots of challenges, but discovered that we tour well together. We recorded another album. We've been playing some shows locally. We played at Victoriaville musique actuelle festival which was a wonderful thing. Anthony shot a video, which people can see from the web-site (also done last year). It's been a fun ride so far. The US tour although difficult because of winter and lots of variables thrown into the occasion, was really successful from a musical point of view. Playing every night or every other night is a really fantastic laboratory. The continual experimentation and the ability for us to expand on ideas over a span of three weeks unbelievably valuable."

The first album was originally meant as one part of a split-cd with Godspeed You Black Emperor!. What's the reason you put out a full-length album, even a 131 minute lasting double album, instead?
"That's just the way things went."

Your goal was to make the ultimate drug record, and musically you succeeded very well. But people tend to take such a line literally, so the question remains: do you take drugs yourself to make this kind of music?
"That statement about the ultimate drug album doesn't come from us. I don't know where it came from. To make the ultimate drug album was never the goal at all. We very simply wished to make a really beautiful album. And that's all. We're very proud of it, and if people enjoy the music on drugs then so much the better. But that is not required at all. I think it's very compelling sober, maybe more so….? As D&G in M P say, "…But so many things can be drugs […] get soused on pure water"."

What's your main inspiration while making the psychedelic, eastern-spiced improvisations?
"All the recognisable stylistic references are definitely drawn from tradition. The oud is a principle actor in classical Egyptian music, and the tabla from Indian music. The psychedelic guitar from 60's psychedelic music and their analog effets, and alex brings in the experimental textural compenent from the past 50 years or so of conceptual music. What Indian and Egyptian music have in common are formal structures that are improvised. For example a progression might be drone -> melody (no percussion) -> melody + rhythm -> solos -> call + response…ad infitum. We don't pretend to play classical pieces of these traditions, but we take up elements of structure to improvise with."

Your music is mostly improvised. Do you ever feel the need to create more composed music?
"We go in cycles where we invent constraints to focus our playing, and then after a while we ditch them like old clothing. Musical problems arise requiring solutions, so we work on them. Maybe we find things dull, or repetitive, or too crazy, or busy, or not busy enough. We swing back and forth in terms of our intent.
We tend to harbour basically two forms of improv. The middle eastern / psych root is sort of formal arrangement within which there is freedom to vary.
The other root is a more texture oriented exploration where randmoness and ambience take precendence over rhythm and build, and where noise take prececedence over melody.
At this point we've spent a year playing a lot with chaos and a dark sound. It was very free because we needed to be free from something that felt constraining. But now, we are beginning to move back towards structure and composition and melody; basically narrative in the more formal sense, because now the freedom needs to be reined in again. Our new album will reflect a lot more the dark edge of last year, but the tour in the spring, I suspect, will feel closer to the first record in terms of approach."

Please describe how a good live gig for Shalabi Effect goes.
"Lots of festival employed sound people fondling over us like happy grandmothers-Victoriaville. We had outstanding people with a great deal of experience doing sound combining delicate hard to amplify instruments (Oud, Tabla) with necessarily loud electric instruments. I remember after being all plugged in, they did careful individual line checks, saying, "There is a buzz in the line…now is that something you wanted or is it noise?" How can you beat that?
The bottom line is that we need to be in a good headspace to play well, to communicate together and not feel like 4 isolated noise makers on stage. There is nothing like a good sound check to promote this fundamental well being because worrying about sound is pretty much all of the stress before a show. After that, we play like children."

What are your plans for the future? Are you coming to tour in Europe anytime soon?
"We are planning a tour in the spring of 2002. It's all in the planning stages but we will come one way or another in the spring. We hope it will be extensive, and we are open to any offers from anyone interested in producing a show. We love touring."

Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am, but I can imagine that totally non-commercial music like your own isn't providing a decent living. Do you all have regular dayjobs or something like that?
"Yes we all have other things to pursue and jobs to make a living, but that's a good thing. Work is good."

What's the musical scene like in Montreal, a place with many very talented avant-garde artists? Is there a lot of harmony between the musicians, or are there times jealousy takes over?
"It's quite nice right now, although I think it is small. Finally after years of hard work by lots of people there are now some decent places to perform experimental music.. The early 90's in particular it was really hard for live music. The bars were mostly that, and secondarily venues. No one seemed to come to shows. Montreal was in a really huge recession and obsessed with separation from Canada; language was a big issue, and so people were somewhat fragmented.
The Francophone art scene has been flourishing for years, and so experimental art has been around in Montreal for a long time, but mostly in large productions of contemporary dance and theatre, not so much in live music. No doubt it is the influence of the Francophone experimental artists, the composers working for these productions, that have influenced in part what is happening now, shifting towards minimalism and noise. I also think this shift is a sign of Anglos and Francophones are growing together, and that is good.
6 years ago, all you could hear in Montreal was heavy rock; grunge; punk. Nobody would come out to see experimental, or even just quiet droney music. Everyone was kind of obsessed with being aggressive. But then people's ears seemed to change. I think the rave scene here in the early 90's, contributed to people's ears being exposed to more minimal and ambient music. Post-Rock made it OK to be quiet in music again.
Godspeed were very important in bringing a community together. So was Constellation's "Musique Fragile". Godspeed had the Hotel2Tango, where a lot of this stuff was born. And it is due to their success that one of the members was able to open the Casa del Popolo. It was really hard to book a free-jazz and noise band in an actual bar around the time Casa opened.
As to your question of harmony. I'd say that the scene is not competitive, it is quite harmonious even promiscuous (in a good way)."

When will the new album be released, titled 'The Trail of St. Orange'? What can we expect from it?
"It's a single CD, unlike the first one, and somewhat darker. It's partly a coda to the first album: there are some snippets of recordings that are older than even the first CD or from around the same time. The main elements are pieces that were derived from a recording session in Ottawa the last day of the US/Canada tour we did late 2000. It should come out around February 2002. The last piece on the album, which is the only long one, and captured very much a certain sound that was coming out again and again during the tour. More Psychotronic as Alex would say, than typically psychedelic. There are lofty moments, but it's a darker more chaotic piece. There is micro-recording of the sound of ants drinking at a puddle of water in that tune. Basically overall it's contrasted somewhat with the first one. The first one is more moody and was crafted over a long period of time. The second is a specific task of capturing a snapshot of where we were at during the tour, and to do it as a concentrated burst to sort of burn that sound down so we can move on."

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Meer Shalabi Effect op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/shalabi-effect