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| Track List: 1. Sounds In the Fields 2. Tezeta 3. Puppets 4. Dusk 5. All Is Fair In Love and War 6. Yangsta 7. Taal Mama 8. Aviary 9. Hush Running time: 47 minutes Released: 2006 |
Now this is an oddity. I bought this album after Gojogo came up in a LastFM station I was listening to, I think based on The Imagined Village shortly after their eponymous debut. I remember delighting in the ambience but have not listed to any tracks from this album for a long time. It should be an interesting one to return to.
It opens very... classically. Not what I remember. I am a little tipsy as I type this and listening to Gogjogo's new-agey work as a counterpoint to a bitty and unfulfilling work day and the bile and rubbish that I have been exposed to as I catch myself up on the hideous mess that is GamerGate. If you do not know what that is I envy you. Save yourself the trouble, do not look it up.
Tezeta is more like what I was expecting to hear, unconventional percussion with a sparse string melody. I am not sure I like the strings, but the rhythm is compelling, if a little hypnotic. It is a short piece though and before I finish a paragraph it is done. Puppets is in a similar vein, but with the emphasis more on the bass/rhythm, the string melody is somehow subservient to them, slaved to the beat (it is also less harshly recorded). Overall I really like this track.
OK to get the major criticism out of the way first: this does all sound a bit deliberately ethnic, a bit "look at us we're diverse". It would be easy to dismiss this album as an ethnic recording, but for the fact the group are white Americans. but that would be missing the point. And missing the genius. The album comes alive with All is Fair in Love and War (which, as it starts, I keep expecting to morph into Knight Rider) and its sheer immediacy. Heavily percussive there are much more western sensibilities about the track, even if the percussion still gives it an eastern sound. There is a tension, a knife edge provided by the structure, the rapid beat, one that is not at all dismissed by the plaintive guitar over the top. It vanishes, to be replaces with an uneasy calm after a few minutes... the track changing tone dramatically as a result, but feeling like there is something to be stoked... only to peter out unsastisfyingly without regaining the urgency with which it opened. I like the track as a whole, but it really could have done with ending on a bang, not a whimper.
Yangsta, which follows starts slow, but does build it is almost entirely percussive, the string line here being so high as to be miss-able. The rhythm is infectious and the introduction of different sounds to complement the basic loop constructs a highly infectious track. This is not representative of anything else in my library, it stands alone - yet music being what music is, the jump from this track to the jazzier end of drum and bass (something that will come up later) is not a massive one. Music is so interconnected, so fluid. In looking them up, it seems they had another album in 2011 - I am enjoying this enough to suggest that I should look it up; Taal Mama might be the best track yet.
Aviary is more hit and miss. It carries virtually no melody in places and the percussion is nothing like interesting enough to pull off the "main event" it is aiming for. And yet it remains an engaging listen because of its difference. The closer is more challenging, but rewarding. It introduces brass for the first time, warbling jazzy laments over the layered soundscape provided by the now familiar percussion and strings. I find my thoughts drifting nicely, the track slipping by, the album closing.
Despite the time, and perhaps because of inebriation, the album as flown by. I am not left with the same strong impression that I recall having on first exposure, but I am left thinking that it is a very nice counterpoint to most of my music. A lot of thought, and no little skill, went into producing this, and whilst it is at best an occasional enjoyment, it is an enjoyment to be savoured.
It opens very... classically. Not what I remember. I am a little tipsy as I type this and listening to Gogjogo's new-agey work as a counterpoint to a bitty and unfulfilling work day and the bile and rubbish that I have been exposed to as I catch myself up on the hideous mess that is GamerGate. If you do not know what that is I envy you. Save yourself the trouble, do not look it up.
Tezeta is more like what I was expecting to hear, unconventional percussion with a sparse string melody. I am not sure I like the strings, but the rhythm is compelling, if a little hypnotic. It is a short piece though and before I finish a paragraph it is done. Puppets is in a similar vein, but with the emphasis more on the bass/rhythm, the string melody is somehow subservient to them, slaved to the beat (it is also less harshly recorded). Overall I really like this track.
OK to get the major criticism out of the way first: this does all sound a bit deliberately ethnic, a bit "look at us we're diverse". It would be easy to dismiss this album as an ethnic recording, but for the fact the group are white Americans. but that would be missing the point. And missing the genius. The album comes alive with All is Fair in Love and War (which, as it starts, I keep expecting to morph into Knight Rider) and its sheer immediacy. Heavily percussive there are much more western sensibilities about the track, even if the percussion still gives it an eastern sound. There is a tension, a knife edge provided by the structure, the rapid beat, one that is not at all dismissed by the plaintive guitar over the top. It vanishes, to be replaces with an uneasy calm after a few minutes... the track changing tone dramatically as a result, but feeling like there is something to be stoked... only to peter out unsastisfyingly without regaining the urgency with which it opened. I like the track as a whole, but it really could have done with ending on a bang, not a whimper.
Yangsta, which follows starts slow, but does build it is almost entirely percussive, the string line here being so high as to be miss-able. The rhythm is infectious and the introduction of different sounds to complement the basic loop constructs a highly infectious track. This is not representative of anything else in my library, it stands alone - yet music being what music is, the jump from this track to the jazzier end of drum and bass (something that will come up later) is not a massive one. Music is so interconnected, so fluid. In looking them up, it seems they had another album in 2011 - I am enjoying this enough to suggest that I should look it up; Taal Mama might be the best track yet.
Aviary is more hit and miss. It carries virtually no melody in places and the percussion is nothing like interesting enough to pull off the "main event" it is aiming for. And yet it remains an engaging listen because of its difference. The closer is more challenging, but rewarding. It introduces brass for the first time, warbling jazzy laments over the layered soundscape provided by the now familiar percussion and strings. I find my thoughts drifting nicely, the track slipping by, the album closing.
Despite the time, and perhaps because of inebriation, the album as flown by. I am not left with the same strong impression that I recall having on first exposure, but I am left thinking that it is a very nice counterpoint to most of my music. A lot of thought, and no little skill, went into producing this, and whilst it is at best an occasional enjoyment, it is an enjoyment to be savoured.
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