Small Defense / Riley Lee - Bamboo Soup & Amanaska - Panorama

[One World Music]

I’ve just received two CDs to review from the same label, and am taking the unusual step of reviewing them both together, as they are closely related – and yet very different. One World Music is a new Australian label “dedicated to supporting and developing home-grown global chill-out”. Think of the craze for chilled world music typified by the Buddha Bar series and you’ve got the idea – although One World claim to have the same quality without the hideous expense. Their first release was a double album called Zen Connection, and this pilot has now been followed by the two new releases reviewed here. Beautifully packaged, presented and promoted, One World are clearly still aiming at the premium end of the market.

I’ve reviewed them together as they are linked by a common theme – both combine organic acoustic and folk elements with electronic music in a fusion One World term “global chill”. This is as good a description as any, although, as with any genre pigeonhole, it tends to draw stereotyped responses. My own knee-jerk prejudice is very anti “New Age” music, associating it as I do with badly recorded whale songs, generic computer-generated trance-lite and people with poor hygiene. I was pleased to be proved emphatically wrong by Amanaska’s Panorama.

Amanaska are Simon Lewis and Stephen Joyce, a couple of Melbourne musicians who have independently produced music combining elements of music from across the globe. Here they collaborated as Amanaska (Sanskrit for a perfect balance of strength, restfulness and alertness) to produce an album which is indeed a fine balance of diverse influences, cultures and sounds. Singing sherpas, folk instruments from Ireland and Eastern Europe and sophisticated urban electronica combine sublimely, unlike so many albums where the different cultures clash, rather than compliment each other. Something that appeals to the dance-music lover in me, and so probably will to many on ITM, is that most of the tracks have real groove and swing, as well as emotional depth and interest – you can dance to some, while others are pure listening pleasure.

The sounds are amazingly diverse – Distant Worlds starts with didgeridoo and wanders off with muezzin-like cries, dirges, whispered vocals, and some powerful drum programming, and ranges in tone from wistful lament to dance-floor stomper, and back. Easeback is the track of the album for me, an 8-minute excursion into jazzier territory, with an absolutely sublime muted trumpet and flugelhorn from Peter Knight. The brass chases the keyboards in a joyful spiral, followed at leisure by mellow bass and cool percussion – just beautiful. The album is a magpie collection of shiny musical gems from around the world, collected with care and put together with real skill and flair by a couple of musicians from whom I think we’ll be hearing a lot more.

I’m less enthusiastic about Bamboo Soup, the other CD out on the One World Music label, produced by Small Defence and Riley Lee. The latter is Australia’s only Grand Master of the shakuhachi -for the uninitiated (and I’ll confess to never having hear of it myself until this week) this is a traditional Japanese flute made out of bamboo, and is used as an aid for Buddhist meditation as well as for playing traditional Japanese music. Lee has been playing the instrument for some 30 years, and here he combines with Small Defence (Sydney’s Kristian Hill and Robert Staines) who provide the electronic backing for his virtuoso flute.

To my ears, the marriage is an uneasy one. Small Defence’s music is cool, urban and edgy, part drum ‘n bass, part trip hop, part electric jazz. Lee’s flute is beautifully controlled and his skill is evident – but the sound of the instrument generally leaves me cold. He squeezes an incredible range of sound and expression from what is basically a bamboo stick with some holes in it – but while I was often seduced by the electronica of Small Defence, I was as frequently jarred by the sound of the shakuhachi. There is something about the tone, a certain edge to the sound that grated me – I didn’t feel it blended well with the backing music, and the balance of organic and electronic was seldom achieved.

This is quite likely a personal thing and other reviewers may have a completely different response – certainly some friends who heard it recently at my place were evenly divided over the album’s merits. They were not dance-music fans, and enjoyed the flute while finding the rollicking bass line and impeccable drums of The Golden Buddha intrusive – quite the reverse of what I was enjoying. One person found the second half of the album very relaxing and peaceful, while I found it irritatingly vague and directionless. I found Red Tentacles exceptionally irritating with is bombastic drums and warbling flute – quite the reverse of chilled. But while I personally never warmed to the album, others found it interesting – and you might find its combination of Japanese folk and Sydney city music appealing.

An interesting duo of releases from One World Music, and I’ll be keeping an eye on future releases.

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