The Handover is the trio of Aly Eissa on oud, Ayman Asfour on violin, and Jonas Cambien on vintage organ and synth. Eissa and Asfour are from Egypt, while Cambien is Belgian, currently based in Norway. They deliver longform excursions into Egyptian trance music, infused with a beautiful, slow-building psychedelic thrust. Naturally rhythmic without the use of percussion instruments, The Handover’s music is a wonderfully enveloping experience.
Their latest release after an eponymous debut in 2024 is New Old Medicine, freshly out via Sublime Frequencies. It offers one piece that’s only break is to allow its brilliance to fit onto opposing sides of vinyl.
New Old Medicine’s long track gives the record its title. Recorded in Berlin at Morphine Studios by Rabih Beain, the music’s shared progression (between the players and the audience), the twists and turns, and ebbs and flows of the journey, the sheer movement that shapes the piece, is captivating as the trio never sets a foot wrong.
The folkloric Egyptian root is discernible straightaway. It’s a natural foundation, nothing forced or fake or exotic. Likewise, the gradually mounting psychedelic qualities are utterly lacking in elements of the retrograde. The Handover collectively develops an atmosphere of psychedelia without premeditation. There are no calculated attempts at the trippy or outlandish. Never do they sound out of control or even on the brink of the same.
To the contrary, there is a discipline to the evolution of sound that deepens and sharpens the expansiveness. The intensity grows and subsides, the tempo changes, and there is an incessant forward drive to the interaction. As should be clear, The Handover’s music doesn’t defy description, but it is gloriously unshackled by genre constraints. Like many of the contemporary artists on Sublime Frequencies, there is a refusal to fall into easy categories.
There’s too much avant edge for New Old Medicine ever to be a standard trad Egyptian update, but simultaneously, the trad structures, and in particular, the sway and swirl of the violin, bring crucial dimension to the piece as it moves. Also, the sound of the organ, exploratory but never noodlesome, can conjure thoughts of some sort of leftfield branching out from the late ’60s San Fran ballroom scene from back before that situation went sour.
To elaborate, there are no dunce-like soul-R&B steals, there’s no singing at all, and in fact nothing that could be considered a hackneyed “rock” move. There are a few spots that can recall the Krautrock scene. The bottom line is that The Handover once again avoided approximation in the making of New Old Medicine. It is a bullseye move of pure intention, a life-affirming delight.
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