By Sammy Stein

Fil O Fenjoon comes from ZÖJ, an experimental, cross-cultural duo based mostly
in Australia, comprising Gelareh Pour on Kamancheh, Qeychak Alto (each
Iranian stringed devices), and voice, and Brian O’Dwyer on drumkit.
They’ve labored collectively on a number of tasks since 2012, and as ZOJ since
2016.

Their music centres across the thought of being from multiple place and
interculturalism. Pour is initially from Iran and has gained worldwide
awards for her work. She has achieved educational success together with her research of
Iranian feminine singers’ lives after migration and collaborated with many
progressive musicians and organisations. O’Dwyer is Australian and explores
sounds as connections, at the moment concentrating on the influence of listener
and performer via response and response. He has been recording and
producing music because the mid-late nineties, exploring throughout genres with a
deal with cross-cultural and up to date music.

ZOJ creates a novel and highly effective sound that mixes the normal music
of their respective cultures with up to date experimental components.
Listening to the album is an expertise and an journey for the ears and
thoughts.

Already attaining reward from many critics, Fil O Fenjoon reveals the
beautiful mixture of Pour’s virtuoso efficiency on the Kamancheh,
mixed together with her dulcet, dynamically managed vocals which add a way
of the unreal to tracks like ‘My Empty Boat’ on the album. The mixture
of O’Dwyer’s intuitive percussion over and behind the Kamancheh on tracks
like ‘Hearts of Stone’ is compulsive listening. His booming bass resonances
echo throughout his intricate rhythms maintained and flowing throughout the observe
whereas the strings rise and powerfully add melody earlier than the vocals add
superb dynamism and power.

The album is a revelation about how music from completely different cultures can
obtain concord by merging their variations and in doing so many
similarities grow to be clear. O’Dwyer can change the essence of a observe
via his drumming, at occasions inserting a contact so gentle it’s as a caress,
and at others so deep and highly effective, that it momentarily seems like an
assault on the senses. However it’s this that maintains the curiosity and the
ever-flowing power that imbues this album. That dynamism is mirrored by
the stringed devices and voice equally eloquently managed by Pour.
Her supply provides the sense she is at one with the music, her voice used
as an instrument, filling the areas between the sustained string, and
driving drums. The phrases of the poems round which the strains are based mostly
comes throughout loud and clear via her highly effective use of sound modifications,
generally drawing again and at others letting forth a launch of pressure.

The ebb and circulation of power is highly effective and creates a way of connection
between not solely the musicians however the listener who can’t assist however be
drawn inexorably in the direction of the center of the creations.

There isn’t a standout observe on the album as a result of the duo creates sounds that
mix the normal music of each cultures and but introduce
experimentalisms and new sounds redolent of the trendy period of their
recordings, and that is carried throughout the completely different elements of the album.
‘Hearts of Stone’ is the observe to which I returned repeatedly on the primary
pay attention, so mesmerising are the dynamics, management, and emotive insistencies
of the music, however then I moved on to ‘The God of Rainbows’ and located
alternative ways the music enveloped and absorbed the listener. O’Dwyer finds
on this observe, the proper candy spot to enter after which construct the sound
whereas the strings weave threads of sonic color behind him. Then, ‘Hymn For
Apollo’ builds a deeply textural basis, below which particular person strings
are picked out to supply a distinction after which ‘Winter for Ghazal’ affords an
nearly classical take earlier than diverging into extra explorative sonic
growth with layered vocals and calls and response and lastly, the
dynamically playful, but strong ‘ Examine of A Bull’ closes the observe with
energy and magnificence.

That that is simply two musicians appears unimaginable, the dynamism and ranges
of sonic interplay are so properly layered. Take, for instance, ‘Examine of A
Bull’ the place the string warps and whiffles over the intricate drums earlier than
chords are created and the facility builds and builds.

The influence of this music is extraordinary – it’s highly effective and majestic but
tempered by a vulnerability within the vocals at occasions, and a magnificence in a few of
the passages that take the breath of the listener away.

The sound is complicated, but accessible, tangled, but clear, unfathomable but
comprehensible, tough to explain but utterly, completely partaking.

Pour’s voice has energy and might soothe or eager in emotive passages, the
exhilarating energy and drive of ‘Photos’ with Hearth’ contrasting with the
magnificence and emotion of ‘My Empty Boat.’ That is an album of contrasts and
modifications, colors and patterns. Above all, it’s superb music that reaches
deep into the soul. It wants little evaluation. It simply is.