DWARFS OF EAST AGOUZA - Sasquatch Landslide

Maurice Louca: Egyptian composer, beat manipulator and keyboardist, passionate about Middle Eastern music and free jazz. Sam Shalabi: Canadian guitarist who has composed countless soundtracks for independent films and a founding member of groups of the caliber of Shalabi Effect and Land Of Kush. Alan Bishop: American double bassist and saxophonist, passionate about Middle Eastern traditions, who founded Sun City Girls together with his brother Richard — a band that, from the early 80s until its dissolution in 2007, blended rock, folk, jazz, avant-garde and ethnic sounds — and who also operates under the alias Alvarius B, through which he charts the paths of American tradition. In 2012 in Agouza, a district of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, these three musicians found themselves sharing the same apartment and decided to join forces, creating a new project that could somehow marry the musical tradition of the Middle East with psychedelia and improvisation. Thus The Dwarfs Of East Agouza were born, and from their debut album, titled "Bes", they took us by the hand and led us on a journey through desert dunes and sidereal asteroids, a kind of ethnic psychedelia that leaves plenty of room for improvisation and the musicians' emotional flow, as in the finest tradition of the genre.

After much wandering, for their fifth studio album the trio has landed on a label that seems to be its rightful home: the Canadian imprint Constellation, whose penchant for musical experimentation and cultural cross-pollination suits the project's sound perfectly.

Across the previous four albums, the musicians have continued their incredible journey, blending Middle Eastern traditions, jazz, psychedelia and folk with an unmatched gift for improvisation. The new "Sasquatch Landslide" doesn't shift their sonic coordinates all that much, but rather reaffirms and refines them with truly extraordinary creative energy. The trio has spent the last decade honing its telepathic live alchemy, touring across Europe, the US, the Middle East and North Africa. Their performances are famously spontaneous and unpredictable: shape-shifting explorations that blend groove, chaos and ecstatic abandon.

The spontaneity and experimental, improvisational attitude of Dwarfs Of East Agouza moves like a serpent, enveloping and insidious right from "Swollen Thankles", which opens the dance before leading us into the percussive labyrinth of "Saber Tooth Millipede", a track capable of dissolving and leaving us at the mercy of a blurred trail of near and distant sounds, sound effects and rebellious guitars.

When the electronic, dub-inflected rhythms of "Double Mothers" widen to make room for a sinuous saxophone, Dwarfs Of East Agouza prepare us for the splendid ride of "Titular", seductive in its frenetic rhythmic caresses. There's no fixed point to anchor the listening to: the trio lets us wander surreally through the sounds, from the obsessive rhythm that introduces the psychedelic progressions of "Neptune Anteater" to the slowed-down, dilated rhythms of the dreamlike "A Body To Match", which dissolves into a wild heap of guitars, percussion and sax.

"Goldfish Molasses" confirms the state of grace of a trio that hasn't missed a beat since their debut, caressing Middle Eastern tradition and enriching it with their shifting soundscapes, moving between improvisation, North African influences, psychedelia, loops and drones that remain unique and inimitable.

After all, what's so intriguing about the legend of the Sasquatch (or Bigfoot) is precisely the fact that no one has ever seen it clearly, and photographic evidence of its existence has always been blurry and controversial. In the same way, the huge appeal of "Sasquatch Landslide" lies exactly in its apparent confusion. So many sound sources reaching our ears at once: instrumental bursts, obsessive percussion, sax lines surfacing, melodic fragments fading into the distance, a bubbling electronic magma. An emotional tension where every sound has its own meaning and place, a lysergic, ecstatic flow to be savored with open ears and open mind in order to enjoy it fully. Listen to it in the dark, letting yourselves be carried by a camel through the desert, on a boat down the Nile, all the way to lifting off into the cosmos with no more time or space: you won't regret it.

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14/01/2026