Jihad Darwish - 4 Parakeets (2023) [Hi-Res]

Multi-instrumentalist Jihad Darwish was raised in Hackney by an Irish Catholic mother, his dad is a noted Egyptian writer, and he declares himself a true Cockney (presumably born at Barts hospital, within the sound of Bow Bells on a quiet day).

Parlaying the Inner London Education Authority's priceless provision of musical instruments to inner city children into diverse, high-end session work, this second album under his own name must be a climax to his steely journey so far. 4 Parakeets combines Indian, Ghanaian and Western sounds and songcraft into flowing, hybrid music, defined by Darwish's diaphanous, dislocated vocal as much as percussive, stinging sitar and gutsy pulses of highlife guitar. “Taking time to study the river, the way it flows,” he muses in a reverie on ‘Kafi Drut’, and the album is gently relentless as it carves out thickly layered and delicately produced sonic space.

The waterfall tumble of ‘Yaman Vilambit’ ends with bat-shriek strings, and Idris Rahman's bass clarinet on ‘Playing Chandrakauns' is Robeson-low, as Darwish sits “underneath the Cypress tree/My face…in shade.” ‘Jupiter and Saturn’ seems to describe lockdown's further meditative opportunities: “I look outside, there's no one…the streets, they’re empty…” We are in a Hackney state of the mind, or somewhere further out, as Wesley Gibbens’ clipped beats root music of sometimes baroque psychedelia, often arising from Darwish's sitar and bass. ‘Weightless’ sums up 4 Parakeets’ world, with its poetically personal lyrics and music set to float away, subtly tethered by craft.



Tracklist:
1.01 - Jihad Darwish - 4 Parakeets (4:30)
1.02 - Jihad Darwish - Kafi Dadra (3:54)
1.03 - Jihad Darwish - For a moment (4:06)
1.04 - Jihad Darwish - Kafi Drut (5:23)
1.05 - Jihad Darwish - Weightless (2:59)
1.06 - Jihad Darwish - Jupiter & Saturn (4:19)
1.07 - Jihad Darwish - Yaman Vilambit (3:16)
1.08 - Jihad Darwish - Playing Chandrakauns (3:55)