Haythem Mahbouli: Last Man On Earth
Schole Records

As its title implies, Last Man On Earth is a concept album. Yet while that might call to mind the glory days of ‘70s prog releases and vinyl sides featuring twenty-minute-long suites, Haythem Mahbouli's second solo album is, at least in one sense, a less grandiose proposition. Yes, the album does beef up arrangements with strings, brass, and choir contributions from the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, but its compositions are song-length and otherwise crafted with restraint by the Montréal-based Tunisian composer on piano, synthesizer, and electronics. Stated otherwise, there is an epic dimension to the release, but it has intimate moments too.

The storyline, ostensibly about our failure to preserve the planet and us with it, has inspired from Mahbouli rewarding musical material. Humanity's final days on earth are envisioned, with the closing track documenting the sole survivor's last days. Depleted physically, he has just enough energy to record a final message for the future, though whether there'll be one isn't clear. If such a scenario sounds dispiriting, musically speaking the album's no prolonged exercise in despair.

Certainly dread emerges in the opening track, “The Chosen Ones,” and the announcer's instruction, “Please wear your oxygen masks and have your documentation on hand.” For the “chosen ones” evacuating, the future is filled with uncertainty, even if a sorrowful theme and lustrous strings go a long way towards alleviating the tension. The melancholy expressed powerfully in that opener carries over into “Farewell to Earth,” emotion now shifting to nostalgia for a form of life no longer possible. In the poignant symphonic statement “The Abandoned Ones,” Mahbouli exploits fully the drama offered by such a narrative, the music infused with yearning and sadness.

Whereas grainy electronic textures intertwine with strings during “Aftermath,” the brooding soundscape perhaps intended to evoke earth's slow demise and the near-total evacuation of its inhabitants, the gently uplifting “Flashback” suggests the remembrance of happier days. The hope felt by the evacuees as they prepare to arrive on a new planet is intimated by “New Home”; the elegiac title track, on the other hand, records the last final words of earth's lone survivor, his regret-filled words like the slow snuffing out of a light.

Production for the project came with some degree of complication, par for the course for projects undertaken during the pandemic era. While Mahbouli was present for recordings of the strings and choir in Budapest by The Budapest Scoring Orchestra, he had to monitor remotely from his Montréal home studio the brass section delivering its parts. With Last Man On Earth, Mahbouli has fashioned a musically satisfying follow-up to his debut album, Catching Moments in Time, a well-received release whose fusion of ambient-electronic and neo-classical realms invited comparison to Johann Johannsson, among others.

December 2022