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Mahmood Schricker
Null
Link Music Lab - 2012
Michael Panontin
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For such a multicultural place, Canada has had scant few examples of truly ground-breaking world music. With the possible exception of Toronto's fiery Punjabi by Nature back in the nineties, and artists like the old-world Black Ox Orkestar or the trippy fusionist Mercen Dede over in Montreal, the vast wealth of popular music here - excellent as it may be - is still being created by a coterie of pasty, bearded, and guitar-obsessed anglophiles. Where is our M.I.A., Natacha Atlas or Asian Dub Foundation?
Having studied Persian classical music with the likes of Amir Koushkani and Bahman Rahgozar, and recently completed his Master's degree in ethnomusicology at York University, Toronto-based Mahmood Schricker is as good a bet as any to shake up this whitebread hegemony. On his debut CD Null, Schricker offers up spacy dub and synth-based interpretations of traditional Persian music, something he calls electro-Persian. Like a lot of Turkish psychedelia back in the seventies, the east-west cross-breeding here feels like a natural fit. Schricker's sinewy beats and the stunning performances of guest vocalists Ebrahim Rahnama, Mariam Toller, Hamasseh Daneshzad and Mohsen Namjoo are like a meeting of old friends, where the centuries, kilometres and worldviews that would normally separate the two are all but obliterated.
It's an exotic journey well worth taking - just head towards the Buddha Bar and then hang a sharp left.
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Mahmood Schricker
Link Music Lab
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