MANSUR BROWN - Rihla

A pane of glass lightly streaked by rain, the city lights mirrored across its surface in a riot of colour. Just behind it, Mansur Brown, head lowered and eyes closed, as if caught by a sudden memory. It makes a strong impression right from the cover, “Rihla” (“journey” in Arabic), the third album from the London guitarist who grew up within the city's thriving jazz scene but soon made stylistic versatility and expressive fluidity his banner, shifting his traits and sartorial choices from one release to the next. After outings defined by a fluid take on hip-hop, with this new full-length the British musician offers an emotional itinerary through his life and musical influences, telling his story through a collection that is once again fluid, in constant transformation. Electronic landscapes and soul glimmers speak of an existence breathed in intensely, set within grey metropolitan surroundings yet touched by flashes of colour that scatter the flatness around it like leaves in the wind. Because that, in the end, is what living means.

Brown is keen to make clear from the outset just how reluctant his music is to accept easy classifications or pigeonholing of any kind. The assessment is essentially correct, notwithstanding the overall electronic framework that supports the guitar lines scattered throughout the journey; the rainy scenes immortalized on the cover art likewise scatter away any overly obvious reference points, suggesting instead moods, fragments of memory carried along by the current, on the verge of dissolving, letting themselves be shaped by the surrounding debris. And yet there's no real ambient inflection here; the album's atmosphere instead favors sonic swells that in other forms could readily be called post-rock (the opening "Fasiha" already hints at this tendency, with its drumming placed firmly in the foreground), nervy oscillations a step away from folk ballad (the urban romance of "Love Is Mine", full of synthetic flourishes), cinematic sweeps ready-made for anonymous suburbs (the future-garage undertones that run through "Ghost").

Throughout this sequence of shifts, the lead voice never loses its sense of subjectivity, never stops directing eyes and ears, thanks also to the deft use of vocal contributions that push the narrative forward. The soul touch mentioned earlier surfaces here, a sweetness that never imposes itself but gently guides, sometimes acting as a true storyteller (the moving breaks of "Toguchi"), sometimes serving as a more reassuring cradle for peaceful dreams (the ostinatos of "Faded" hold firm amid the growing breakbeat textures).

The journey confronts turbulence and relaxation in full control, and as the long instrumental message placed toward the close of the tracklist suggests (the only one to recall the musician's fusion background, with intriguing echoes of Yussef Dayes), existence never unfolds in a straight line. It's up to us to interpret its course, to play with the sudden structures that emerge only to let them go. Suspended between dream and reality, Mansur Brown's journey delivers excellent slices of life.

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22/08/2025