Worlds Within Worlds — the Sydney-based label specialising in Eastern classical music, whose releases from Palestinian oud player Nizar Rohana, Gnawa musician Abdel Benaddi and Pakistani rubab master Gulab Afridi have all featured on KLOF — recently announced a new signing. Sareban, the musical project of Swiss-born Afghan rubab player Mathieu Clavel, has shared Ayrılık, the second single from his forthcoming debut album Echoes in the Weave, due May 8th.
The track explores a rhythmic cycle rarely, if ever, heard in traditional rubab repertoire: the 10/8 jurjuna, a groove widely found from East Anatolia to Iraq, particularly across Kurdish musical cultures. For Clavel, working within this cycle was both a creative impulse and a disciplined exercise, opening new pathways for phrasing, improvisation and structural development on the instrument. He is joined on the track by Turkish percussionist Şakir Ozan Uygan on dohola.
Clavel’s playing is shaped by a decade of intensive apprenticeship under Ustad Daud Khan Sadozai, and his influences are rooted firmly in the Afghan rubab tradition. He cites the great masters of the past — Ustad Mohammad Omar, Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz, and Ustad Qurban Ali — as inspirations, alongside contemporary players including Wahid Delahang of Herat.
Echoes in the Weave presents a body of original music for the rubab that is grounded in tradition while extending the instrument’s expressive possibilities. There are no electronics and no attempts to hybridise the sound with Western idioms. Instead, the music unfolds within inherited modal frameworks from Afghanistan, Hindustani classical music and neighbouring traditions, allowing space for improvisation, repetition and gradual transformation. The album was largely recorded in near isolation in the south of France, with additional parts captured in Switzerland and Istanbul.
Ayrılık follows the album’s first single Dar Aghoosh-e Mawj, released earlier this year.
Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://sareban.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-in-the-weave