Sand Enigma is the stunning most recent album from one of our favorite musicians, Canadian-Egyptian guitarist Sam Shalabi and his fusion orchestra Land of Kush. There’s a lot going into this massive record, starting with the huge and excessively talented orchestra of musicians. Those include Shalabi universe regulars like guitarist Anthony Seck (Shalabi Effect, Valley of The Giants) and Devin Brahja Waldman (who is one of my favorite saxophonists anywhere,) as well as newcomers like keyboardist Maurice Louca and rising Egyptian art-pop singer Nadah el Shazly. The distinct sounds of traditional Egyptian music and worldly psychedelic rock are definitely distinguishing features. Likewise there are so many gorgeous vocals centered prominently on a lot of the tracks, lyrical and otherwise.

All those elements create an ultimately very avant garde album that’s still exceptionally memorable song by song. There’s all kinds of fun, classic jazz fusion/big band stuff happening like abstract choral vocalizations, textural percussion, big wall-of-sound crescendos and dramatic horn blasts. In this way the record delivers on everything I want from the format but the songs move along quickly and nothing overstays it’s welcome and feels corny or canned. Sand Enigma feels alive with inspiration and improvisation the entire time and that feeling of life seamlessly ties together the psychedelic, jazzy or folk/traditional passages.