Reviews by kuvien

This album is well-named, for the music is woven by enchantment, just beautiful threads of magic throughout. Even the song titles are like something out of a storybook, hints at the sway of natural forces and olden times, not afraid to indulge in the playfulness of the glockenspiel. This one is full of hippie whimsy and billy-goat vocals.

Theatrical vocals without being campy. This is an enchantment-weaving folk album. The overall charm of this album is simultaneously warbling and gnomish, seemingly incompatible traits woven together well here.

What can I say? Side A is unassailable, of course. But let’s talk about Side B for a moment, how it spends its energy in chaos, falls into an ode to serenity, and comes out of the meditation with more self-awareness.

Imagine being part of John Coltrane's legendary quintet but the end of the 1960s finding you driving a taxi to pay your rent, and then you get into your own groove and release a run of 11 legendary albums in a row. Wild. So what does "sama layuca" even mean? Nothing, according to the dictionary. Rather, it is a name, a title, an interpretive reference to what one reviewer called "pseudomorphosis", the natural incorporation of old cultural elements into the extant modern culture, as the rhythms of the world beyond American borders underpin the compositions. And you'd have to have had your head in the sand to not know that a lot of jazz at this time is conscious of and explicit in expressing the struggles and spirituality of the Black experience in the United States.

It’s kind of weird to hear the koto so prominently on an album about ebony women and the Sahara. I guess he was going for an ethnic feel? The koto is an ancient instrument to be sure, but it’s not as old as the “Valley of Life”, and we’re pretty sure human life began in Africa, not Japan. Whatever, moving on. I dig the passionate piano playing on this album, and straying into avant-garde territory, accompanied by the sax, on “Rebirth”. I’d imagine a genesis of life would be quite chaotic and spectacular. Side B only the title track, an epic piece that starts with the natural and ancient sounds of the desert (sands, insects, drums, etc) reproduced on instruments before the wild piano breaks in, and the saxophone blows like high winds over the dunes.

Expansions. It's pretty much all right there in the title, as the liner notes explain. He pays his dues as a teenager in nightclubs, then joins Coltrane's Quartet, then strikes out on his own with his own trio, which expands to a quartet, then a quintet... see where this is going? Then a tentet! At the time of this recording, Tyner was hoping one day to play with a full orchestra. Expansions. Adding more instruments to give voice to his concepts. And as a bandleader, Tyner isn't afraid to add dashes of flavor from beyond his borders, as well, in this case, from Japan.

I dig this mainly because of the duet-like qualities of how the saxophone and the female vocalist play off each other, especially on the title track, highlighting the spiritual African influence Tyner is going for.

Lame.

The perfect music for the sad, unmotivated white suburban kid who's had everything handed to him on a silver platter.

This brings donkeys to climax.

An experimental lo-fi listening experience that doesn't demand anything from the listener.

"Look there's two reasons why people work
One, to take their minds off the frightening possibility of
What they would do with all their free time if they weren't working and two
To buy enough things to keep their minds
Off the frightening possibility of what they do if they weren't working"

Indie landfill.

This isn’t related to the music, but this album has one of those covers I could just stare at for hours. The color, composition, and subject matter are all so lovely. Anyway, about the music—it’s weird to me that there are no Arabs in this collective. We’ve got Turks and Jews and Persians but no Arabs. What gives?

The kind of music a "music lover" thinks is good until he actually broadens his exposure and realizes this isn't as good as he once thought. Then he goes back strangles the vocalists.

This is music being degloved.

Tepid, cliche-ridden, and derivative.

One thing I didn't realize about punk for a long time is that its pessimism isn't necessarily misplaced. People do indeed suck. Actually, the purveyors of punk have good instincts: it's all bullshit anyway. And they're almost right. Fucking the dead, though? So that's what a Code Blue is!

Unity in the verities. All truth is God's truth. This is a selection of festive as well as liturgical songs from the Congolese tradition for the Catholic Mass.

The pastoral vocal harmonies and the strophic form indicating storytelling, the strong traditional feel to the music, and the beautiful fingerpicking all bring such joy. A couple of short spoken parts break up the music to make it feel like an intimate performance for perhaps a patron or at a roadside inn, a performance that is sometimes subdued, sometimes celebratory.