Karkhana

Karkhana is a multinational band comprising musicians from Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, and the US, who play an eclectic style of music that incorporates elements of electronic music, post-rock, and jazz with strong middle eastern influences. Their music often has a percussive quality where rhythms are central to the flow. The band enjoys playing eastern and western traditions against one another and drawing quite a bit of tension from the conflicting tonalities. This back and forth frequently ends up leading into stretches of dissonant drone or psychedelic jamming (if not both), with a deliciously rendered, melodic, slinky, at times playful dance overlaid on top, as has been the tendency of their recent work. Not surprisingly, their pieces tend to be long and intense affairs that regularly hit the 9, 10 minute mark, but do so while going through changes and refusing to stay stationary in one place.