WALK LIKE AN E-GYP-TIAN

Listening to Phil Thornton and Hossam Ramzy's follow-up to their 1996 album, Eternal Egypt, makes me understand why I never took to Eternal, but love Immortal. Eternal Egypt was heavy on electronic Thorntonisms, the earthy Mideast aggressively filtered through the modern electronic Western music studio. It was too hokey for its own good.

But in Immortal Egypt, T. and R. have handed most of the playing over to bonafide Cairo "master musicians," including creme de la creme percussionist Ramzy himself.

It's not electronic clarinets that squeal on these ten tracks; it's that buzzing banshee of an Eastern reed, the mizmar. Likewise the anthropomorphic bamboo flute whose voice keeps breaking (the nay), the scratchy violin with the head cold (the rebaba), the fretless guitar that plucks so delightfully out of tune (the aud), the menagerie of bump de boomp and tzickety tzickety drums and cymbals, and all the other timbres on tap that comprise the pungent polyrhythmic feast that is North African music. Thornton's quirky electronic touches are so spare on this album, they're cool.

The music itself (composed by Thornton - an Englishman - and Ramzy) is as Egyptian as the instruments, with very few exceptions (as in the jazzy "Cairo Blues"). It's vividly recorded too, as clear and in your face as a big, sweaty tabletop belly dancer.

Guaranteed to make you get up and WALK LIKE AN E-GYP-TIAN.