Richard Horowitz & Sussan Deyhim, Majoun (Sony Classical) 9+
Majoun is an unusual album inspired by the sacred trance musics of North Africa, created by an American composer and an Iranian singer/composer. It has taken over ten years and six locations (New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Morocco, and Indonesia) for Richard Horowitz and former dancer Sussan Deyhim to complete the album. While reveling in the more ravishing aspects of music is a noble cause, I was a little put off by the pretentiousness of their liner notes, claiming that, "here we put the x back in xtatic." Majoun is okay for those who also like making out to Dead Can Dance, but it has nothing on Al Green. The popular aesthetic that defines what is erotically sensual is often much too narrow for real experience. For example, the brutish rhythms and hoarse shout-singing of Mule are intensely sexy when involved in some serious, knocking-over-the-furniture shagging. However, I have to admit that Horowitz has a firm grasp of Moroccan art and culture. He first visited Morocco in the late 60s and eventually settled there in 1975. While he has more recently lived in New York and London, Morocco has stayed with him, especially on his award-winning soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci's adaptation of Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. He has since worked on albums by two groups of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka and co-produced the Gnawa Musicians' classicNight Spirit Masters, with Bill Laswell. Horowitz has worked with Deyhim since 1980, when they collaborated on their first album, Azax/Attra: Desert Equations. Like their first album, Sussan Deyhim's strange but powerful voice is emphasized and re-emphasized through layers of samples and dubs, much like the experiments on recent Sheila Chandra albums. While they have help from friends like the On-U Sound rhythm section and The Moroccan National Radio & TV Orchestra -- I've seen it in both New Age and Moroccan sections in stores -- the music undoubtedly belongs to Horowitz and Deyhim. Whether or not the ethereal layered vocals ignite the medieval gothic in you and get you (or your parents or grandparents!) all hot and bothered like the duo hopes, it is beautiful stuff.
