Various - East-Westercism flac mp3 download

As the title might suggest, this album takes the sound of Eastern music & mates it with all that is modern (and sometimes not so modern) in Western musical culture. The resultant hybrid is a surprisingly fluid, entertaining & fascinating journey through a musical chimera which has been a long time coming to fruition but well worth the wait. None of the overloaded voices which always seem to be pushing the VUs far, far into the red, or the sitar scrambles which remind one more of some somnambulist walking through an unfamiliar shop-full of metal wires. This is quality - no one track stands out as weaker than any other. This is a bona-fide victory of album arrangement by PHIL EARLE & KINGSUK BISWAS. Makes you want to hear more by each artist.ANSUMAN BISWAS's track sounds like a sped-up version of MUSLIMGAUZE - pattering patterns of (what sounds like mostly sampled) tablas and ethnic skins, below which a bass winds up and down like a locked-groove MICK KHAN. A variety of other sounds join in (what sounds like slight guitar splashes and crash cymbals held way back in the mix). Despite being mainly percussion, this has a distinctive and hooky tune to it - where understated makes all the difference.SYZYAY make a much more electronic sound - opening with ambient street sounds and African-sounding flute, this soon heads towards a kind of complex and much more dense AUTECHRE approach to rhythm.TALVIN SINGH's track, dovetailing onto the ambient end of the previous piece makes for a much more dreamy, abstract sound. Hearing the album without following it track by track, you kind of miss out on how cleverly these two pieces fit together. This is Ambient and dream-like without lulling you in any way. From Ambient abstraction it transmutes into a deep and mysterious dark piece with heavy kick drum and tapping Scat-like vocal fragments.KULJIT BHAMRA follows hot on the trail of the previous track, keeping a low key, understated mystery to it. The lead instrument here seems to be the bass which, while keeping the rhythm, does tend to meander off at abstracts. This piece, while being a distinctive, relaxing sound, is not unlike 60s Prog Rock in it's composition. It builds in both tempo and intensity, with enough electronica going on within the mix.SUMMIT contribute their first of two tracks - one of the most distinctive and hooky pieces here - a rich, simple tune where most of the emphasis is on a warm slightly twangy guitar, gradiant-filtered atmosphere and deep humming background. Almost guaranteed to worm it's way into your head - a classic hybrid of Traditional Ethnic music with Jazz and cutting-edge percussive exploration.DOPPLER 20-20 pick things up to a Curry-flavoured Drum 'n' Bass sound. As unrelentingly driving and explorative as most of the better music in this genre, with some nice, somewhat unique chant sound which peeps through now and again.GOLDWATER take things to an even more Ambient area, with this drifting mysterious journey which probably owes as much to LULL and ZOVIET FRANCE as it does to anything. A journey through underworlds, but a more passive, brighter one than most.BEDOUIN ASCENT takes experimentalism yet another step, with a hypnotic exploration of delay repeated cycles which overlap and build into a maelstrom of noise set against a muted Rock Drum workout. Manages to be a rhythm and have enough going on to make you want to move, although as dance music it has opened up an almost unexplored field.T-POWER take up the noise-intensive gauntlet thrown down by the previous track and carry it further. Rising from the ashes of the previous piece's churning relentlessness, they delve into the brimming junkpile of experimental audio, seeking composition from abstract. What they get is a vaguely connected noisework of bleeps, whines, sustains and a soporific declining bass.PEARL, along with SUMMIT manage to contribute two tracks to this album. They take us back towards a more formed musical vein with this electro-percussion-alive piece which owes more to percussion dabblers like HAT as well as a fair bit of Drum 'n' Bass programming turned into something less in your face and altogether more interesting.MAYKO finish the first album with a delicately woven, almost New Age theme. This grows into a larger, more DREADZONE-like dance track - heavily bolstered on thick bass and a determined, teeth-gritted gait. One of the most distinctive things on this is the vocal sound - presumably female, but electronically altered to sound like some thin but tonally enjoyable instrument. Cool late night chill room stuff.FORCE OF ANGELS open the second disc gently, with Eastern Dreams set to a filter-shifted rhythm which manages to be delicate and filigree with programming very much in a Break Beat vein, only a lot more searching and shifting. RICK WILSON plays an energetic Jazz-based rhythm which seems relentless in it's medium-paced journey.SUMMIT bring their second piece, this time built around a mountainous bass motif. It's kind of a Funky piece, with a variety of strange sounds happening around a solid central drum pattern of deceptive simplicity. Full of Eastern mystery, but with at least one foot in an Ambient Jazz West. A subtle theme, almost incidental film drama music, grows as it draws towards it's conclusion.WITCHMAN takes us out of a weird and mysterious Dreamtime into another cool dark place, sounding not unlike some collaboration between PORTISHEAD and DREADZONE. Strange and often fragmentary, this is a distinctive piece of dramatic Ambient Dub.MUSLIMGAUZE should need no introduction. This is an example of the late composer's live sound (recorded at the Abraham Mosque in Manchester). He always created a distinctive meandering Ambient Ethnic sound which is here even more subtle and mysterious than usual. Thin, subtle and alive with half-hidden electronics, this shows the man at his creative peak.PEARL bring us their second contribution to this double album next, pulling their track out of the ashes of MUSLIMGAUZE. This is quite different from most of the other music here - quite experimental in a weird Industrial Electronic way. It sounds like something COIL might have created. Slow, seemingly tracing two separate tempos simultaneously. Strange, warm, and just a touch impishly humourous, this makes for an enjoyable stop-off-point for the album with it's bizarre Side Show feel.DAVID TOOP takes us even further into the realms of the twisted and strange, opening with STOCKHAUSEN-influenced weirdness, before taking us down a surprisingly pedestrian loop-avenue. Creepy dramatic noise hides like a death threat within a thick and muscular bass-heavy drum rhythm.FLUID follow TOOP's track smoothly with an Electro-Funky sound with chunky drums, fat electronic bass and all manner of sounds. It sounds like a collaboration between someone like MATERIAL and SCORN (not beyond imagining!!!). It's cyclic repetition makes it slide with creepy effortlessness through the undergrowth of medium-paced dance grooves hypnotically.RHYS CHATHAM & MARTIN WHEELER bring us the antepenultimate piece, set to medium-slow tablas. Quite minimal this piece, with emphasis on the trumpet sound which is muted and abused in a gurgling fantasy while other subtle sounds join in the slightly broken and corrupted sound. Stripped-down it may be, but distinctive and effective, growing deceptively complex as it matures.WAGON CHRIST is a lot more electronic, sounding almost as if it aimed for the Torture Tech or EBM scene and just narrowly missed. I can see why it's here - relentless driving ethnic-type rhythm doesn't sound out of place, but it's probably one of the most electronic pieces (and has one of the most distinct 'tunes') here. A little bit Industrial and Experimental, this is good dance music with mine-shaft-deep bassy sound which is not so much tune as subsonic feeling.MARTIN & LISA wrap things up for us - managing to be one of the most 'immediate' and hooky things on the album, and I believe the only one to have 'lead' vocals on it, with LISA sounding not totally unlike a far more tuneful NICO, wistful and dreamy, yet intelligent and thoughtful. The music is fast, full and very 'Poppy' with a sort of up-to-date KATE BUSH backing dragged along on mighty rhythmic devices. A nice wake up call for those of us who might have lost ourselves in the labyrinthine sounds of the 150+ minutes of virtual instrumentals.Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.