The concept behind the joint-venture consisting of d.b.h and the two turntable wizards Chrisfader and Testa is quite simple: Take a specific genre of music, sample and flip it into danceable beats. 

In the case of their second EP "Dabkeh", named after a popular Mediterranean form of line-dancing, the subject of the musical explorations is the Arab world. The three guys from RLS spent quite some time mining old vinyl or cassettes to create the tracks on this EP, in the hopes of getting some wild Dabkeh moves started on dancefloors worldwide!

www.facebook.com/RestlessLegSyndrome1
www.restlesslegsyndrome.bandcamp.com/
www.tiefparterrerecords.com 
www.duzzdownsan.com 

Buy at Juno

Restless Leg Syndrome - Dabkeh - 08 Safra

recollection of the Robert Schumann's "Auf einer Burg"

live recording from Schumannfest Dusseldorf, May 22, 2014

Natalia Pschenitschnikova, voice
Fedor Lednev, cond.
Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble

Liederkreis

Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Song -- Mirtnesh Tilahun  Atiersata  አቴርሳታ

Movement 3 of Matthew Shlomowitz's 'Instrumental Music' (2012)

Rehearsal Recording made by Erik Nyström, May 2013

Matthew Shlomowitz - (3) DrumVocabulary

Performed by the Schulich Singers of McGill University 
Conductor: Gabrielle Gaudreault 
Flute: Hannah Darroch 
Percussion: Qiuchen Wang, Paul Finckel

Mar Maroun (2017) for chamber choir, flute and two percussionists

Ombra: pour violoncelle baroque (5-cordes) et orchestre à cordes
Interprété par L'Ensemble Arkea, sous la direction de Dina Gilbert
Avec la violoncelliste soliste Elinor Frey
5 avril 2018 à la Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur

photo: Nicole Aline Legault
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Ombra. for solo 5-string cello and string orchestra
Performed by Ensemble Arkea under the direction of Dina Gilbert
With solo cellist Elinor Frey
April 5 2018 at la Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur

Ombra (2018)

EXAUDI

Juliet Fraser, Amanda Morrison (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter, Alastair Putt (tenor)
Simon Whiteley, Jimmy Holliday (bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

world premiere 
live performance

Milton Court Concert Hall, London
22 March 2019

commissioned by EXAUDI with funds provided by Arts Council England's National Lottery Project Grants scheme

'Pocket Universe is an ebullient, and at times zany, setting of words from Galileo Galilei's Dialogo i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico e copernicano and Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in their respective languages. What interests me in using these texts is not so much their meaning—which most of us know and few of us understand—but the energy behind them. The same goes for the music whose material is on the whole commonplace, but whose energy accumulates on account of dialectical/modular principles and coalesces into a self-supporting “universe”. These principles can be explained by analogy. Imagine musical blocks that snap together in various ways, like Lego, or assembling a wardrobe from IKEA without the instructions: by such principles a novel entity is created. The processes in the music combine rigour and “Eureka moments” in much the same way as I imagine these authors did.'

Geoff Hannan: Pocket Universe (2016)

For Solo Bass Flute
Performed by Helen Bledsoe 23.06.2018

Commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik
First performed 19 November 2016 by Helen Bledsoe at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

Bite (2016)

Sarah Nemtsov
NUN (2019) - excerpt 
for ensemble (ob, cl, sax, vl, vla, vlc, perc, pno, assistants) with electronics 
*
live recording of the premiere by ensemble mosaik with Enno Poppe (conductor)- May 22nd, 2019, Kesselhaus Kulturbrauerei Berlin
*
NUN was commissioned by and written for ensemble mosaik
- duration of the whole piece approx. 24 minutes

NUN (2019) - ensemble mosaik - excerpt

Multi-track recording by members of Ensemble Dal Niente.
Recording/Mixing: Igor Santos

video of premier: https://vimeo.com/387611594#

"Patina" progresses from a volatile mass of percussive sounds towards its tainted reproduction. A flickering and multi-colored mixture of noisy and pitched gestures.

The "Zoetrope" pieces mix together disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs end up contributing to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation and repetition.

Composed May/June 2019 (Baltimore)

Zoetrope V: Patina (2019)

Orientalism derives its name from the eponymous book by the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said. My interest in orientalism started with the constant disparity I felt between my experience of being an Arab, and the representations of Arabs which I saw in art, media, and even what claimed to be scientific literature. Those representations of “the Orient” had very little to do with what I know about my own background, my lived experiences, and everything that I have read in Arabic. This piece is a result of these reflections. It is a commentary as well as an artistic response to that phenomenon.

Another interest of mine has been the passage of time, especially the passage of musical time, as opposed to chronometric time. In my quartet, the measurement of time is passed from player to player, so as to create a flowing evolution of the sense and function of time. As each player takes control of measuring time for the whole ensemble, a natural shift in the perception of time will occur for interpreters and audience alike. The passage of time thus interacts with perspective and with focus. Every player will get the chance to manifest their experience of time, resulting in four different perspectives on the flow of time. These different time-layers ultimately create a counterpoint of tempi between players. Essentially, my quartet intersects my interests in Orientalism and the passage of time – both of which part and parcel of phenomenology, of conscious experience.

Unlike a traditional string quartet, which seeks to blend the individual player with the quartet, my piece seeks to identify the individual in opposition to the ensemble. Just as time flows smoothly from player to player, so too do sounds bleed into each other like different colors, or different perspectives continually intruding into one another – whilst alternating with solo passages. This draws a parallel with the disconnection between the individual and the system, between my individual sense of self as an Arab in America, or a Christian from a Muslim-majority country (both of which Edward Said himself experienced), and the system and politicized representation of the Middle-East and of its peoples (often viewed as only one people).

Orientalism received first prize at the Foundation for Modern Music’s 2021 Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers, first prize at the Suzanne Culley Senior Composition Competition, third prize in the SOCAN Foundation’s 2021 Young Composers Awards, Chamber Music Category, and honorable mention in the 2021 ASCAP Foundation’s Morton Gould  Young Composer Awards.

Performers:
Maya Ito Johnson, Emera Gurath, violins
Breanna Lang, viola
Lydia Rhea, Cello

Orientalism-for String Quartet (2020, rev. 2021)

Lebanese-Canadian composer of contemporary classical music.

Mar Maroun (2017) for chamber choir, flute and two percussionists

Maria Atallah

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