The Dwarfs of East Agouza Sasquatch Landslide

Invariably described as vibrant, Agouza is a riverside neighbourhood in Giza, the part of Greater Cairo on the west bank of the Nile best known as home to the Great Pyramid and a giant, noseless sphinx. Agouza is also where the three Dwarfs—Montreal guitarist Sam Shalabi, Egyptian keyboardist and beatmaker Maurice Louca, and American saxophonist, guitarist, and vocalist Alan Bishop—first assembled, in 2012. And though the title Sasquatch Landslide conjures up visions of a reclusive Northwestern American beast and crumbling mountainsides (Bishop, once a member of the semi-legendary Sun City Girls, hails from Seattle after all), the album feels more like a hectic, wonderfully deranged Agouzan souk crawl, with occasional detours into the nearby desert—or maybe how someone who’s never been to that part of the world might imagine such a tour sounding in the dark, ecstatic recesses of a fever dream. It all begins with the conga-loop-driven drone of “Swollen Thankles” and winds down, perhaps from sheer exhaustion, with the woozily sluggish “Goldfish Molasses” (the Dwarfs have a way with titles). Apart from the staccato plink of Shalabi’s oud-like, detuned electric guitar, most of the time it’s difficult, and perhaps pointless, to determine the exact instrumental sources of the music. Halfway into the most overtly electronic piece, “Double Mothers,” Bishop so effectively conjures up the spirit of a chanting muezzin or two on his reverberant saxophone that it might take a moment of concentration to recognize what instrument you’re hearing. Delirium has seldom if ever sounded this exotic and delicious.