Search - Al-Pha X :: Gravity

Multicultural Promise with a solid (but not stellar) payoff

evilsmeck | San Jose, CA United States | 05/16/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Al-pha X (aka Declan Flynn) does his piece for multiculturalism with his studio project, Gravity. Many of the tracks are availible on the "Arabica" anthologies, also published by Bar-de-lune.Middle eastern muezzin calls rising from an electronic drone starts off the first track, savvily titled "First Transmission". There, Flynn's sampling and studio prowess comes to the front with a bobbing groove, punctuated with distinctly arabic flavored fiddle. A strong cut.From there the album changes pace into "Hojar". Slower and reliant on a strong bass groove, this track also merges in a flavor of dulcimer weaving in and out of the electronics. Next up, "Mad Keys" speeds things up slightly but is by no means in a hurry to get anywhere. Male and female vocals parry in enhancement of Flynn's dreamy synths."Blue Jay" and "Punjaabi Love Affair" are further (Indian) branches on Flynn's influence tree. Don't be afraid, Al-pha X uses just enough of these influences to flavor the music while he keeps a good steady beat behind all of this to keep the mood going."Thai Ways" is an innocuous sitar-mandolin accented piece that again, just meanders but never grates too sharply. "Mi Corazon" and it's remix are yet another cultural turn into flamenco/Andalusian turf. Not my favorite tracks as Flynn and co. seemingly retrace ground already covered, although I admire Flynn's willingness to keep my interest with the genre changes. He's a one-man cultural sampler."Vermeo" slows down to almost dirge tempo and much of the instrumentation and the female vocals have enough reverb on them to sound as if they were recorded in a wind tunnel. I would like this track better if it were cleaned up a bit. "Mission Not Impossible" is a moderate tempo, gaelic-middle eastern sampler worthy of Afro-Celt Sound System. Not a bad group to emulate. The title track, "Gravity" is a latin percussion flavored number that actually has Flynn himself singing. His voice is surprisingly sweet and he uses it to good effect in the pop-hook laden chorus. I hear an influence of BT in this track. Wrapping things up, "The Wedding Song" is a mid-tempo visit back to reverb-land. Too much reverb does not equal a dreamy, floating sound; it just gets too muddled in some places.Warning: this is an "enhanced" cd. Bar-de-lune includes some extras on this disc that I cannot comment on. Why? Because they botched the implementation when they burned the disc. At least on my system (using Windoze XP; I know, I know, there's half the problem right there!) the files were inaccessable. Contact with Bar-de-lune's multimedia designer, Glass-eye, was next-to-useless, after a generic response that led me to believe their customer service group doesn't even know what is on the disc and couldn't be bothered to look, let alone how to fix the problem. A response along the lines of "be grateful the music plays" while insisting it runs _fine_ on their version of XP is about all one can expect from that lot.Music only: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 out of 5.
Multimedia: 0 stars; Glass-eye gets the finger."

Breathtaking

Mike | New York, NY USA | 02/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Best of the Bar De Lune label's artists, this CD is absolutely wonderful. Artistry, instrumentation, production: end-to-end this is an absolute winner. If only all music was this good, you wouldn't see music sales slmuping, year over year. I'm an audiophile, and find new intracacies in the music on this disk, every time I listen to it. It conveys so many moods. This is, far and away, the best album I bought in 2002. (FYI: Bryan Ferry's latest comes in a close second.) BUY THIS AND ENJOY IT. WORTH EVERY PENNY, AGAIN AND AGAIN."