Just after Godspeed You Black Emperor! licensed f#a#oo to Kranky, the word was that their next release would be a split-CD with a band called the Shalabi Effect, to be titled Aural Florida. The split record never came to be, and Godspeed eventually released last year's Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP before settling down to work on the highly anticipated Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven. As for the Shalabi Effect, it seems that when they were recording, they couldn't find the tape deck's "stop" button, and wound up amassing much more than a half album's worth of material. Enough material, in fact, to completely pack this two-disc album. Bold for a debut, no? The fact that Godspeed You Black Emperor's forthcoming opus also comes on two pieces of aluminum doesn't say much for the Canadians' sense of restraint. Have we learned nothing from the saga of Smashing Pumpkins?
Fortunately, despite similar pretensions, this ain't no MACHINA/The Machines of God. In fact, this isn't even remotely close to being rock music, which helps a lot. The idea of extending subtle, meditative, drifting soundscapes into minutes in the triple-digits is somehow more forgivable. While this band does share a certain stylistic similarity with Godspeed (stuff like extended pieces, varied instrumentation, and Hebrew lettering on the album cover), the Shalabi Effect generally don't provide the pop payoff of Godspeed when their orchestral tension reaches a grand, thundering release. Instead, this music is more about the process than the resolution. Let's try to break this monster down into its component parts.
The most immediately noticeable thing about this music is the strong Mid-Eastern feel. Part of it is the wide use of tablas and various hand drums on many of the tracks (there is no standard drum kit), and part of it stems from song structures and scales that seem duly influenced by the Indian concept of the raga. By combining hand drums with plucked guitars and banjos that repeat the same patterns with minor variations (some of these phrases consist of only a single note), a hypnotic, trance-like effect is created.
The number of stringed instruments employed here is astounding. "Mending Holes in a Wooden Heart" even recruits Godspeed violinist Sophie Trudeau to create one of the album's best tracks, an evocative blend of ringing electric guitar, tablas, banjos playing Middle Eastern scales, and screechy violin that owes a lot to 20th century classical music. And on the next track, "Aural Florida (Approach)," we're offered nine minutes of twisted, mind-blowing guitar feedback, carved out of the silence by leader Sam Shalabi with the precision of an ice sculptor.
The second disc offers even more variety. "Mokoondi" combines several flavors of hand percussion with a hypnotic guitar melody lighting up the Arabian Night. "Amber Pets" culls its ambient mood from slow, dreamy guitars processed to the hilt. "Boardwalk of Apollo Beach" is the most tech-heavy piece, jettisoning the drums and acoustic guitars in favor of rumbling, eerie electronics. "Apparitions" uses electric guitar drones in the manner of late-period Spacemen 3, with wavering chords and drifting delays. "On the Bowery" is the only track with vocals (sung by Strawberry's Deidre Smith), and it is outstanding: ancient Persian trip-hop played on period instruments that builds in intensity like the closing montage of Apocalypse Now.
For consumers, this is what it comes down to: if you're into the drone and you're into space, and you don't need melodies, chords, or the other trappings of pop music, you're going to like the Shalabi Effect. If the idea of an acoustic guitar playing the same two-note pattern for five or six minutes while subtly modulating synths swirl around is about as appealing as listening to a car alarm, it's not for you. You have been warned.
