Reviews

Faris Ishaq
Album: Jasad
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 7
Website: https://www.farisishaq.com/

Faris Ishaq's 2026 album brings together the physicality of performance and the evocative sound of the Nay, a large scale mouth piece reed wind instrument. JASAD, Arabic for body is aptly titled with Ishaq's breath and resonant bass drum filling the space. You can feel Faris' performance, it sounds physically intimate and close, like a personal performance.

Drawing on Arabic traditional songs opening track "Ard" features a very percussive melody with some of the stutters, stops and vocalisation made famous by Rashaan Roland Kirk and via his "Serenade To A Cuckoo", Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. The Ney melody over the drum and foot percussion rhythm is decidedly spry and compelling with real subtlety too. In "Incense Trail" as the title suggests, the breathy evocative wind instrument slowly twists and shimmers around you. Bethlehem born and raised Faris recorded JASAD in his studio in the heart of the West Bank.

Tracks like "Incense Trail", originally inspired by the Arabic word "Qabas" for a creative spark that starts a flame, capture an incredible atmosphere and sense of place. Maybe the bigger message here is about the way that music is universal crossing borders , requiring no passes or permits unlike residents of the West Bank. "Carved" like "Ard" has a visceral rhythm and features some very flute like playing with the vocal noises, drum and Nay creating an otherworldly atmosphere. Faris says that his music moves between 'rich Arabic Maqam modalities and fierce, Coltrane inspired arrangements' to create an evolving dialog with global jazz sensibilities. Certainly the physical pulse of jazz comes through consistently and with "Fragments" and "My Favourite Things" the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune from The Sound Of Music so associated with saxophonist John Coltrane is explored on the Ney. At 2.38 Ishaq's bright version of the famous tune is beautiful but short by Coltrane standards as the master musician aptly mixes the melody with some succinct but hypnotic improvisation.

"Sukon" 'Stillness' is stunningly subtle and beautiful, all about the space around short and long notes. "Sukon" and "Twilight" are both slow and drifting, sounding full of the landscape, putting me strongly me in mind of the compelling genre crossing music of Stephan Micus and reminding us that the Ney was originally a shepherd's instrument.

I am a big fan of the aforementioned Stephan Micus, who transitioned at an early age from rock music to a lifelong personal deconstruction of folk music on instruments he collected on his travels around the world. And to a lesser degree Paul Horn a cool jazz musician whose contemplative solo instrumental recordings inside the Taj Mahal and Great Pyramid at Giza are immersive and legendary. Faris Ishaq combines the purity of solo virtuosic performance with the funky drive of Jazz and sits well alongside the meditative music of Micus and the ambience of Horn. JASAD is both beautiful and highly recommended, as Ishaq breathes (sorry) modernity into the Nay, a 5,000 year old Middle Eastern flute, while making a compelling album.

Marc Higgins

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