Guardian's Contemporary album of the month: 'Sand Enigma' by Land of Kush - "disorientating, exhausting but quite compelling"

Land of Kush is a Canadian collective of 20-ish musicians, headed by Sam Shalabi (Egyptian born in Lybia, raised in Canada), playing a combination of free jazz, Arabic classical, postpunk and pan-global folk music. Their last album from 2013 emanated "heady optimism inspired by the Arab Spring, and Shalabi has spent much of the last six years living in Cairo". Land of Kush's 'Sand Enigma' Guardian hears as the best modern classical album this month because it - "seems to reflect the confusion and dislocation of latterday Egypt: a santur solo is interrupted by dramatic string stabs and arrhythmic baritone sax squalls; a cello freakout coalesces into a stately Arabic love song; an ecstatic free jazz duet for tenor sax and wordless vocals mutates into a delicate flamenco ballad. The best tracks unify these disparate sources".