It had been eight years since the previous album. Eight years of wandering and exile for all music lovers. And then here is this gem, what am I saying, this masterpiece that appears, steeped in the theme of exile and human drama, the one currently unfolding in Gaza. But in the Brahem style, let’s specify. That is to say, with an elegance, a gentleness, and a poetry of immense depth and enchanting melodic beauty. After the Last Sky is taken from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, whose full title is Where should the birds fly, after the last sky? The question, which is symbolically posed when thinking about the course of the war in Gaza, can also be asked for the whole of humanity, by adding the question of the dramatic fall in global biodiversity. From there, let the album’s eleven tracks transport you into fleeting but poignant images, carried by the winding and expertly intertwined lines of Brahem himself, with his oud, but also Anja Lechner (magnificent) on cello, Django Bates (magical) on piano, and Dave Holland (brilliant) on bass.
Contemporary and cross-cultural chamber music of the most extraordinary artistic stature.
