Mahmoud Refat steps up to the plate for his entry into Staalplaat’s Mort aux Vaches series with a live recording at the consummate Amsterdam radio station VPRO. Rhythmic drones and hollow tones abound. For almost fifteen years now Staalplaat has been serving up the peculiar helpings of experimental music, often leaning in a more ambient direction with its Mort Aux Vaches series. At times the limited nature of this serious is agonizing for fans too late to catch a copy of the newest release, as they can feature some of the artist’s best work. Other times, it seems as though the limitation is well deserved. Mahmound Refat continues this trend with a fairly hodge-podge collection of tracks recorded live in July of 2006 at VPRO.
The sounds found within the customarily gorgeous packaging are atmospheric, but have a definite rhythmic nature; similar to the loops of Jan Jelinek, but not as lush. Unfortunately these songs don’t seem quite sure of themselves on their own, or as a entire unit. The collection as a whole could be seen as incoherent, but may have been forgivable if considered archival material. This is the main problem with this release, for me, as it fails to be an engaging live performance on the whole. The transitions from track to track seems arbitrary, and there is certainly a lack of thematic elements. The droney loops build and often begin to induce a trance, but on several tracks are quick to be taken over by glitchy noodlings that break the audience’s focus; and I don’t get a sense that this music is intended to be particularly jarring. The other recordings here don’t fail in this regard and maintain a pace well without taking the listener out of their spell, but do not evolve as one might hope they would. This is the key to successful experimental ambient live performances: hypnotizing the audience and taking them places before they even realize they even are there.
