This is kind of CD you buy based on seeing the cover art alone – the cut and paste cityscape with pretty art nouveau typography drew me in immediately.
Glissandro 70, bears a resemblance to those amazingly ambitious four-track projects that the more musically inclined indie kids were doing back in the early 90's. The album is very guitar heavy, which may come as no surprise considering one of the two members is in a band called Guitarkestra.
Early in the album, on the opening track, “Something", pretty guitar parts recall King Sunny Adé and other African sounds, and also the softer moments of early Steve Vai efforts.
These give way to what sounds like a harmonica-as-vocoder experiment on "Analogue Shantytown" that comes off funny and curious. This segues into a funky clean guitar party and falsetto vocals with a stoner four-track sound.
Pseudo-African chants with charmingly bouncy and syncopated rhythms on "Bolan Muppets" recall African music and the experiments in world-music undertaken by acts like Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Paul Simon.
"Portugal Rua Rua" adds some tasteful super low-end percussion to the mix and clean and gentle wah-wah guitars with lots of delay and reverb lending a pretty, droney 80's flavor. A relatively complicated rhythmic figure adds interest.
The CD ends with a 13+ minute ethnic jam session that gets a little dubby and psychedelic.
I envision Perri and Dunsmuir debuting this CD to a group of indie kids doing vaguely ethnic looking dances around the living room and looking pretty damned sexy in a nerdy kind of way.
A great album for those fans of fun, loose experimental music who aren't afraid of a little-world beat in the mix. Me, I grew up on Sonny Okosun and Sunny Adé and all that good stuff… I love the bright, warm tropical vibe of Glissandro 70 – it’s a great pick-me-up in the midst of a long Canadian winter!
- Something
- Analogue Shantytown
- Bolan Muppets
- Portugal Rua Rua
- End West
