Mamouna

Bryan Ferry: Mamouna

O.K. we've hit the 90s, I'm a post-Beatles rock'n'roller (see Adrian Belew) and my old buddy Bryan Ferry has taken a 1-way ticket to Ambient City. Out of the blue, I get this audio post-card from him, Mamouna. I can't really make out what he's saying, he mumbles rather a lot...and his guitarist friends (and there are rather a lot of them) scratch, slide and generally go to a great deal of trouble to be hardly heard, too.

I'm thinking Bryan's lost it, Mamouna doesn't even seem to have songs, just moods which dreamily shift from laconic to really laconic...and then back to laconic.

Ah! But you see, I haven't moved with the times. I still believe in the passion of rock'n'roll, that hook, that song, that moment that can rip your heart open and you know the artist is eyeballing you, daring to say that things are different.

Oh, I see, people don't  want that, now. They want an artist to fit into their lives...not the other way around and Mamouna is the ultimate "chill music", something to bubble along ambiently while you do something else, with:

• hypnotic, trance-like grooves
• enigmatic lyrics that float in and out of sense
• punctuated by a short, subdued guitar solo, counterpointed by another, that's...
• ...dragged back into light funk by the sonically unsmiling rhythm section  

Oh, you can relax to Mamouna, you can chat over it, in fact it probably makes excellent music for doing a lot of "stuff"...and the best part is that in all this ambient chill, there's a slow, sly building towards the final "track"...the only "song" on the album, the haunting and utterly enchanting Chain Reaction.

Bryan Ferry: Mamouna

"...Since buying this disc the day it came out (nearly eleven years ago!!), I have gone back and forth as to my feelings about it. Finally, I have made up my mind and feel that I really do enjoy "Mamouna"...however...(it) is a work that is, in my opinion, TOO overproduced. There are almosts too many layers to the music and too many instruments and so the wonderful songs...seem to get lost sometimes. During his recent solo tours, Ferry would open his show at the piano and do a simple version of The Only Face...accompanied by just a trumpet. Needless to say, it (was) far superior to the version heard on Mamouna..." Amazon reviewer Jon M De Benedictis

"...This is not an album that jumps out and punches you in the nose but rather envelops you slowly with understated, trance-like rhythms, subdued solos, falling minor key chord progressions and haunting vocals. In lesser hands, this material would sound homogenized and dull but Ferry's distinct voice and persistent grooves keep the record percolating along..." Amazon reviewer No Name

Don't take from this review that I dislike Mamouna, because I don't. Ferry and co-producer Robin Trower have created a superb ambient album...it's just not a pop-music album.

Irony upon ironies is that Mamouna also saw Ferry's reunion with early Roxy Music member and ambient music pioneer, Brian Eno, who would, I'm sure, have deeply appreciated Mamouna's qualities.

For more info, see:

• Arena Magazine interview with Bryan Ferry promoting Mamouna