Shalabi, Sam / Mike Gangloff & Liam Grant

***Recorded live at the intimate Montreal listening room Casa del Popolo, this small slab packs a wallop, with two sides of cosmic acoustics from a multigenerational trio of tonal explorers.

On the front half, we’re treated to a masterclass in oud improv by Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs of East Agouza, Land of Kush), one of the deans of the Canadian experimental-music scene. Beginning in a gently meditative space, Sam gradually — almost imperceptibly — ratchets up the energy, with fretboard runs and rapid-fire percussive tremolo passages shooting off in all directions like ever-expanding spirals of sound. An absolutely magical blast to the brain.

The second side finds young buck Liam Grant joined by out-music lifer Mike Gangloff (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) for a particularly extrapolative take on a cut from the former’s recent joint Prodigal Son on VHF. Over Liam’s modal 12-string stylings, Mike layers a thick bed of fiddle drone-and-shuffle-and-scrape — the whole thing slowly gaining in propulsion and density, captured in gloriously blown-out portable-recorder “fidelity” that only adds to the charming squalor.

Essential release!!!