Composer and bassist Tony Elieh has created a new project with Arabic singer and songwriter Aya Metwalli called Los Panteros.  Their debut album on Famous Grapes Recordings is 24 Ribs.  Elieh was former bassist for Lebanese punk band Scrambled Eggs, while Metwalli's background lies in Egyptian traditional music.  There are four pieces here, which range from seven to ten minutes each.

Immediately making a strange and visceral impression, the first track is a duet for dissonant frequency-modulated electronic oscillators and sung female vocals in Arabic, with a heavy harmoniser effect that adds a deep resonating lower octave.  Later in the ten-minute piece, drone pitches and quasi-tribal synth percussion enter.   Finally, Aya's voice envelops the entire mix as it is processed with delays and warm overdrive.  You might say this is a kind of Middle Eastern post-industrial music, exploring the more aggressive and haunting qualities of Aya Metwalli's classical-influenced style by introducing gritty modern production.

Heavy picked bass guitar engages in folk-like arpeggiation on the second piece "Ya Tayren Tayer", harmonised with an octave pedal in a similar way as the voice was in the previous song, and made to sound more exotic with some lush shimmer and verb.  There are fewer vocals than in the first piece, with Aya joining on occasion to sing a single line before pausing for a minute or more.  There is a sort of deliberate, hypnotic minimalism to the structure of their music, which evolves in dynamic arcs over long stretches in a manner not unlike the most abstract krautrock.  Though the only percussion is loose and abstract, there is certain a sense of underlying pulsation and steady movement, perhaps created by tempo-locked electronic underpinnings.

"Zalimou el 7osni" starts with sub-bass tones that truly rattle the walls, as well as tiny shimmers of ultra-high frequency, and will test the limits of a hi-fi sound system.  Though at times violently harsh, the sound design on this album is very precise.  Various sound layers and instrumentation ebb and flow to create a massive dynamic crescendo throughout the track.  The middle is anchored by a heavy post-punk bassline of three notes.

The final seven minute title piece "24 Ribs" is a dissociated surreal drift of bending pitches from the voice and various other instruments, sounding curiously similar to 20th-century atonal composers like Schoenberg or Boulez.  An electronic micro-rhythm composed of tiny clicks and pops and accompanying harmonium-esque drone gradually swell in volume throughout the 2nd half.

This is a masterful release that recalls some of the Middle Eastern-inspired jazz on Zorn's Tzadik label, but more authentically and natively Middle Eastern.  The tracks are filled with sweeping improvisational noise and morphing frequency modulating glitch, and yet always feel purposeful and focused, grounded by the emotional power of Aya Metwalli's melodies, and the rhythmic solidness of bass guitar.  Within a freeform context, they have created natural movements and sections.  To me, this is the ideal kind of avant-garde, one which freely introduces conventional beauty and emotion so as to interweave it in a novel manner with the experimental and sonic strangeness. For more