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LP
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KHZ 1017LP
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Ritual of Light is the first full length from Descending Pharaohs. Recorded in mid-2022, it marks the band in its first year as a trio with a sound that is mainly implemented by the conventions of guitar, bass, and drums and enhanced by rich textures created by Turkish sazbaglama, greek tzoura, and oud as well as drone-driven electronics. Their influences run deep in the realms of '70s electric Arabic/Anatolian, spiritual jazz, and krautrock, but they project these influences towards a modern translation to produce a sound and vocabulary that transcends these collective influences. There is a primal nature to the songs that captures the ethnographic post-punk excursions of Savage Republic or the Sun City Girls, and the more sinister sides of the Krautrock worlds of Ash Ra Tempel or Amon Duul II. The Pharaohs are quite heavy in a traditional sense of the word, but also bring the compositional complexity and raw power of amped up Eastern scale workouts that are rarely executed without pretension by American musicians. The creative dynamic between Theo Khoury, a bassist/oudist of Palestinian descent who grew up consuming as much UFO and NWOBHM as he did George Wassouf, and Ricardo Esway, a guitarist with disparate influences that can be heard clearly through a vaguely third stream filter, is well-versed in Omar Khorshid and a veteran of post-punk projects and live gamelan orchestra, results in vivid multimovement soundscapes that animate future folklores, complete with casts of characters, dialogues, and story arcs that elicit a reaction from the listener. Together, the band takes on half-structured and half-improvisational passages that are ultimately accessible yet still maintain one foot within the abstract. These songs can often take on a dark modal character that is vanquished by a dirty, angular ferocity.
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