Maurice Louca
CCA, Glasgow
Rob Adams
THREE STARS
Egyptian musician and producer Maurice Louca made some new friends as he ended his European tour with this well-received, intimate gig in CCA 5. Louca creates the kind of grooves that can trigger inadvisable shape-throwing and awkward feet-shifting but your reviewer wisely kept thoughts of movement in his head. It’s easy to hear how dancefloors have been filling to Louca’s sounds though.
He has forebears in Joe Zawinul and even Terry Riley, the former especially coming to mind as someone who brought the sounds of the streets, be they Asian, African or South American, and propelled them with beats both electronically created and drums and percussion-derived.
Some of Louca’s ideas, which carried the sampled hubbub of markets and the joyfulness of praise singing, might actually have benefited from further compositional development or the presence of an improvising melody instrument to give them extra lift, but the tension he and his rhythm team created between electronic and conventional rhythms and between sampled lines and those created in the moment made for an enjoyable series of pieces that never overstayed their welcome.
Louca alternated between a mixing desk and a keyboard, adding rich colourisation and attractively dense harmony as bass guitarist Ashar Farran held down the groove and drummer Tomasso Cappellato variously sat out completely or whipped up a percussive ferment in tandem with and against almost industrial beats.
The effectiveness of Cappellato’s playing was particularly emphasised in the final piece as he created a locomotive-like momentum underneath Louca’s keyboard work, sustaining and building it before seeing the engine analogy through to its conclusion with a gradual, highly dramatic, beautifully controlled slowing down to a satisfying halt.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here