Maetar - Love Dub and the Abstract One Drop (2024)

A great album unfolds like a journey to a place you’ve never been. From the early anticipation as you pack up the bus, to the trials and tribulations along the way, the story unfolds as your own. And so we sit back and cue up Love Dub & The Abstract One Drop form the Los Angeles band Maetar (may'-tar). Brothers Itai Disraeli and Hagai Lev-Shalem Izraeli grew up on the pastoral Kibutz Mishmar Haemak in Israel, which their grandfather co-founded in the 1920s in the valley of Megido. In their childhoods, it was ‘a place of wonder" - a verdant valley of fertile fields, fruit trees, and pine forests. They were taught to speak both Hebrew and Arabic, and to live in peace with their neighbors. They began making music at the respective ages of six and four as their whole family gathered for weekly jams around their grandfather’s table. In addition to his official forestry work, their grandfather was a gifted natural musician and a popular poet whose work is part of the canon of early Israeli folk music to this day. Richard Fultineer landed in Los Angeles from his native Pennsylvania in the 1990s, just as a vibrant worldbeat scene was beginning to flower in the local clubs. He met African musicians, master drummers, kora players, brass players, and traditional dancers. He studied Yoruban drumming with master talking drummer Frances Awe, and toured with him in South Korea, Canada and the U.S. for music cultural exchange programs and performances. With a central ethos of freedom and flow in music, Maetar effortlessly traverse vast stylistic ground as they marry smart jazz grooves with imaginative, challenging sonic explorations in psychedelia, funk, ambience, and electronica, as well as subtle classical references and world music flavors. The three musicians are virtuosic, commanding their instruments with mastery and innovation, but the true essence of Maetar is the profound connection, respect, and chemistry they share -- the spaces they leave for each other, and their deeply intuitive interplay.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Maetar - Naked Jungle (9:15)
1.02 - Maetar - Fütna (3:53)
1.03 - Maetar - Freedom Together (10:51)
1.04 - Maetar - In The Sun (3:53)
1.05 - Maetar - Goat Milk (5:20)
1.06 - Maetar - Pointing at the Moon (8:17)
1.07 - Maetar - Age to Rage (6:42)
1.08 - Maetar - 2 e U e U (7:16)
1.09 - Maetar - Strong Men Dance (9:48)
1.10 - Maetar - Tubanah (3:40)
1.11 - Maetar - Root and Float (3:43)
1.12 - Maetar - Sky Hunter (5:29)
1.13 - Maetar - That Maetar Sound (5:07)
1.14 - Maetar - Cloud Morphing (3:05)
1.15 - Maetar - Put it in the Bag (5:25)
1.16 - Maetar - Energy to the Bones (4:06)
1.17 - Maetar - Love Dub (5:02)
1.18 - Maetar - Love Lifts Me (13:25)
1.19 - Maetar - After All (5:44)
1.20 - Maetar - Ascension (13:47)