Wild musical journey
07/01/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Haunts, the third US album by the New York-based Chinese experimental singer Liu Sola, is a wild musical journey that sounds both primitive and futuristic. Alongside bassist/guitarist Fernando Saunders, drummer Pheeroan akLaff and keyboardist/vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, Sola wends her way through seven ambitious, electic tracks, overlaying jazz riffs with vocals of exceptional range. At times her voice warbles like a bird in mating season; at other times it sinks as deep as a chasm or soars like a rainbow in the night. Her ideas are not populist ones, but that's precisely where she derives her greatest powers."
Haunts is as much a collection of feelings as it is an album
05/15/1999
(4 out of 5 stars)
"HAUNTS Review by Christl Perkins- Beijing Beat Magazine and ChinaBuzz Online Store, November 1998.Chinese opera and folk blended with blues and jazz...are you thinking what I'm thinking -- Yoko Ono and Muddy Waters? Think again. Haunts, the third and newest album of Chinese musician, seven funky, groovy, hip, relaxing, a-little-on-the-cerebral-side songs. The album starts off with "Daddy's Chair," a nine-minute piece combining oriental melodies, laced with Liu's blues piano, Liu's solo vocals are in otherworldly, a faraway child-like ambience which is between Bjork and Enya. The second piece, "Witches Beads," is more spirited and a little bouncy. Liu's cat-like wailing and shrieks (a little on the Yoko Ono side) are complimented well with Amina's soulful, warbling scat. The percussion and bass plucking and strumming keeps the body-wiggling tempo, while Liu plays piano -- this time in a voice, Liu shows her the lead voice ranges a couple of octaves between forlorn bellows and sunken muffled moos to altissimo, alto, arch, delirious, elevated, inebriated, intoxicating, lofty, souring, soprano, summit, cascades, operatic Whereas her previous album, Blues In the East can be called an amalgamation, a federation, a merging, Haunts should be called a commingling, a liquefaction, a synthesis. Blues In the East is Fusion, it's World Music. Haunts is experimental, avant-garde. Haunts represents a collaboration between classic Chinese folk opera, blues, jazz, Japanese Noh Theater and African-American story-telling. I wouldn't recommend this album to those with a closed mind -- Chinese people are apt to say -- that's not Chinese, that's not music -- she has bastardized Peking Opera. It was said that Beethoven saw notes in colors -- he saw C as The structure of this music comes from emulating handicraft designs. As I trace out the outlines of a chair or a necklace, at the same time I hear witches, jongleurs, fox-demons, and Buddha all together screaming at me." Liu Sola is an individualist -- period. She feels music. As she explains her creative process, she shapes each phrase with her body movements, bowing her back and curling her arms to demonstrate how she takes a Peking Opera melody and stretches it over a Japanese Banshi scale. For that reason, Haunts is as much a collection of feelings as it is an album of music."
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1