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Telling Stories to the Sea, Adventures in Afropea 3 - Luaka
Bop |
One more eclectic compilation by those Luaka Bop folks, headed up by David
Byrne. This time around, the music revolves around the African-Portugeuse
experience that exists in Brazil, the Carribean, Africa, and Cape Verde
(an island in the Atlantic). The wonderful voice of Cesaria Evora crops
up 3 times. The other names I am not familiar with, but the quality is
very high. The mix of music is great, too: salsa meets Carribean music
meets African rhythms. What I like so much is that the sound of it is easy
on western ears (it's not so much a challenge to listen to, like the Pygmy
music can be), yet it isn't trite or silly westernized international styling.
A few songs do sound a bit goofy, but the rhythmic patterns and voices
usually make good out of cheezy production. This isn't quite as good as
the Luaka Bop "Afro-Peruvian Soul" album that we got last year, but it's
almost there. (8 apr 96) Back to Top
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Time Out New York, Knitting Factory sampler |
The Knitting Factory has put out a few CD's and now they have their own
label. This release is filled with good progressive jazz that's not too
terribly extreme most of the time. What a line-up of artists, too! For
the No Wave fans, Lee Ranaldo is on here; Liminal does some ill-bient music;
and Anthony Braxton is here; Arto Lindsay plays a slightly trite tune;
Mark Dresser slaps the bass....A great jazz album! (31may96) Back
to Top
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Yomo Toro - Las Manos De Oro |
We have a slab of vinyl from this short, fat, mustached man, and I happen
to like it more than this CD which was just put out, mainly because the
vinyl is a bit more upbeat and engaging to the feet (you want to dance,
I guess). That does not mean that this new CD stinks, though! The disc
has its moments, though most of those revolve around the instrumental tracks.
Yomo Toro plays the cuatro, a small guitar used in traditional Puerto Rican
music, and I don't know if any other recordings exist at the station with
this instrument. When vocals come in, he enlists the help of a female vocalist
to take care of that. The styles that crop up are salsa (of various styles),
a mazurka (no kidding), a bolero, and some other styles that I have never
heard of. Like I said, it's mostly calm music, but somehow you can enjoy
it in those more mellow moments. (8apr96) Back to Top
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Trance 1 and Trance 2 |
This is a 2 CD set of indigenous music by peoples from all over the world.
Some of the songs last 25 minutes, but you can always fade in or out of
them. After all, they're already excerpts from much longer pieces.... The
premise behind this set is that the state of trance in meditation and spiritual
seeking is often induced through music. Often, dance is involved, but unfortunately,
these aren't video-discs. Oh well. Some of the recording are illicit, so
there's no staged music here, buddy! More than most world music recordings,
this is completely foreign to my experience. Of course, that makes it more
interesting.
During my radio show, I only played two songs, one from each CD. On Disc
1, I played the Tibetan overtone chant by the lamas and monks of Shartse
Dratsang Garden Monastery. Like the rest of the CDs, it's meditative, trance
inducing, personal and private. The CDs also have Sufi rights, Balinese
gamelan gong (of which we have a whole CD, too), whirling dervishes, and
gnawa music from Morocco. These are all things I may have heard OF, but
have rarely heard. How do you react to 25 minutes of gnawa music? I end
up opening my ears and just listening. More than with most recordings,
it requires doing nothing else, focusing on the sound, and just plain being
there. But I suppose that's the point, anyway.... (13mar96) Back
to Top
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Trance Planet Vol I and Vol II and Vol III |
Unlike the ellipsis arts Trance series, the Triloka one goes into more
westernized and electronic sounds (especially on the lesser quality vol
II). The gems are all on volume I, with artists like Cesaria Evora, Mercedes
Sosa, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Zakir Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan, and others.
Volume II has the wonderful Sheila Chandra on it, but most of the other
songs are electronic music with a bit of worldly influence. The songs are
on the one hand mellow (and almost too western, as with Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan's) but on the other hand very good. The CD to volume I has good liner
notes to guide you through the artists, and the music is great for those
gray, moody days. (20mar96) Volume III came out in October, and it sits
somewhere between the previous two albums. A mix of new age wimppy crap
and semi-cool mellow trance sounds make up the content. It would sound
good in an ambient or world beat or even classical or avant-garde environment.
Some songs sound like This Mortal Coil, and Ali Akbar Khan is back on deck
for another track, like in volume I. (16oct96)
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Trinidad Hot Times compilation |
Trinidad and Tobago sit at a crossroads of American soul, rock, R&B,
Jamaican reggae, dub, dancehall, Latino cumbia, merengue, salsa, Indian
ragga, chutney, and their very own calypso styles. Carribean music was
never this confused, at least in theory. The actual presentation of music
involves mostly cheezy pop versions of real music with cheezy lyrics (no
more ìletís love one anotherî hippy stuff in the international
music scene, please, itís driving me nuts!), but then again, a few
good tunes exist. The disc has the usual problem of compilation discs:
spotty quality. Good listening for radio presentation on the songs you
end up liking, though.. (4nov96)
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Jose Maria Vitier - Havana Secreta |
Piano based Cubano music with some rhythm thrown in. Mostly, this seems
like a movie soundtrack to a bar scene that never made it into the movie,
where the couple sits and has a drink while the lounge singer is sick in
the back room from heroin withdrawal and the band plays anyway. (31may96)
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Brice Wassy - N'ga Funk |
The album title is slightly misleading, this isn't hip hop in any traditional
sense of the word. Wassy, a drummer, has played with a ton of African and
jazz artists: Manu Dibango, Francis Bebey, Joe Zawinul, Toure Kunda, Don
Cherry, Colin Walcott, Nana Vasonceles, Salif Keita, and more. That should
actually give an idea of the style: Makossa music (see Manu Dibango's Wakafrika
for a great version), jazz, great rhythms, funky keyboard work, and some
great jamming. (16oct96)
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Jah Wobble - Heaven and Earth |
The former PiL bassist who has been on his own with some pop-world-music
hits returns. The guest list contains the Pharoah Sanders band (mostly
Bill Laswell's Material crew) from "Message to Home" on two tracks. Two
other tracks are more eastern oriented, and very mystical. Pretty long
tracks, some of which are new age-y (read: boring). Of the two Material
influenced tracks, one is very calm, while the other is jammin (with scratching
and all) in the mode of Herbie Hancock's Rockit, just not as good. (4jun96)
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Yosefa - The Desert Speaks |
A woman singing Arabic pop and dance music meets an Israeli audience. This
would be weird, if it wasn't so normal to hear. It sounds just like plain,
normal pop music, a bit trite with simplistic chord changes, filtered through
clubs around the southern Mediterranean during the late 80's. Yosefa's
vocals are a bit hollow without enough richness or fullness for my taste,
and I would only play this at moments when I feel the urge to go into my
Arabic club phase (like with Aisha Kandisha, Shaba Fadela, Loop Guru's
duniya album, or things like that). (16oct96)
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Zap Mama
- Seven |
The Luaka Bop label hits a homer again. Zap Mama is a singer living
in Belgium but from Zaire, and the big name quest musician on the album
is Michael Franti (of Spearhead, Disposable Heroes, and Beatniks, he toasts
in track 4). This is some great pop music with excellent international
flavor, all sorts of styles melded together, and a good feel throughout.
Track 1 quotes Bob Marley, and all the other tracks show a strong interest
in social issues as told through a singer-songwriter storyline style. I
really like this album!! (24apr97) Back to Top
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Hokwe Zawose - Chibite |
A movement in Tanzania ensures that traditional forms of music are both
promoted and recorded, so that they may be disseminated to other parts
of the world. Well, that's what this CD is, and it's out on the wonderful
and consistently good Real World label, headed up by Peter Gabriel. What
is it about labels headed by open-minded westerners (this one and Luaka
Bop, under David Byrne's obsession with Brazilian and Portugeuse colonial
music)? Just curious. The music on this one is all acoustic, mostly percussion,
with either call-and-response vocals, or a solo vocalist (the male tenor
voice works quite well in this setting....). A really enjoyable listen.
Traditional Tanzanian music with mainly thumb piano accompaniment. Zawoseís
voice is incredible, all sorts of sound effects and moods come out in this
raw, traditional folk music style. This isnít pop, it isnít
jazz, it isnít western at all, itís just plain old indigenous
music at its best. (29sep96) Back to Top
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Tom Ze - The Hips of Tradition |
A wacky album title goes well with the truly crazy Brazilian music. This
is the fifth in Luaka Bop's Brazil series, and it's subtitled "The Return
of Tom Ze." Wherever he was, welcome back! The album is filled with nutso
lyrics (they're translated in the book, and my Brazilian housemate calls
some of them "fucked," so there), and the music is consistently interesting.
Somehow, his word play makes sense, even in a foreign language; he uses
words in a very melodic and percussive sense. Little avant-garde interludes
between songs don't exactly hurt my good reaction to this disc. After all,
if one person cam create music this eclectic, rhythmic, and challenging,
while having an excellent voice, how can I not like it? (13 mar 96) Back
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Zoviet France - Shadow, Thief of the Sun |
This one falls out of the world music category, and into the other style
of music that I spend lots of time listening to (especially in my radio
show lifestyle, though not so much at home, where people object to hours
of this....). Zoviet France is one of those industrial collectives that
plays "real" industrial, in the mode of early Throbbing Gristle, early
Neubauten, or others of a similar style: no beat. The "tyrrany of the beat"
mode of industrial won't be heard on this CD, trust me! Instead, it's eerily
similar to the atonal (well, 12-tone) aspects of Ligetti's soundtrack to
2001: A Space Odyssey. Sounds and textures float along, but instead of
being produced by vocals, their source is electronics and gadgets, noisemakers,
etc. Industrial music for industrial people, right? The tracks all flow
into each other, and it gets (not surprisingly) close to (again, beatless)
ambient music in the process. That's what it really is: music for backgrounds,
but worth paying attention to, without rhythms or cycles. Just there. I
love this disk! (29sep96)
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