Genre:  Ritual Ambient / Dark Ambient

Track Listing:

No Track Listing Available

I’ll let you into a secret: I am really not a fan of live albums – most of the ones I’ve heard, with one or two exceptions (South Saturn Delta’s “Experience the Concreteness” is one), have been bloody awful to say the least. Often sounding as if they were recorded at the bottom of a very deep mineshaft with the microphone left at the surface and almost always lacking in clarity across the full spectrum along with some obscuring crunch, they very rarely meet expectations and are completely devoid of any kind of atmosphere, even with the inclusion of spectator noise – certainly I have never particularly wished that I had been in the audience of any performance that had been taped for posterity, except for, as noted above, a few exceptions. (I once remember, in my misspent early youth, buying a Judas Priest ‘Live in Japan’ album that was probably the worst purchase I’ve ever made, before or since; it sounded pretty lacklustre and decidedly fake – even the cover was a fake live posing. Certainly from that point on I was exceedingly reluctant to buy further examples of live recordings)

This one though left me curious – judging from the description in the press release it amounted to quite an event, at least the inference being that the regular arty audience patronising the Bay Area’s Godspeed didn’t quite know what to make of it; either the audience at the event were impeccably polite, deeply involved in the performance or they just couldn’t quite grasp what the hell was happening - such is the lack of noise and participation. That reaction, whatever it may have been, is one thing I would love to have seen. And for once I have to say that the quality of the recording isn’t bad; it certainly doesn’t take anything away from the music and I would even venture to say that the spaciousness of the venue has added a certain expansiveness to the sound that kicks it into a higher orbit.

So what’s the music like? It’s actually quite good, a mix of atmospheric ritual ambient electronics and loops, hip-swaying tribal percussion and voices, weaving together in a beguilingly hypnotic harmony. Kyron, aka JC Mendizabal, the main protagonist of this performance, studied Music Composition and Electronic Music at San Francisco State University and he’s joined here by percussionist Jim Sienkiewicz with vocalists Ettana Zak and Lydia Harari. Moods range from the distinctly unsettling and unnerving to the cosmic and uplifting, with everything in between; there’re even moments when you’ll want to get up out of your chair and do some shuffling and swaying on the dancefloor. Both the vocal and percussive contributions are appropriately pitched, augmenting the mood and feeling of each track as they unfold, the percussion in particular driving the music in one or two instances. It’s immediately apparent that these musicians work extremely well together, nothing clashes, disrupts or interrupts; all the tracks progress and develop smoothly and logically, with the transitions between each piece utterly natural and without pause from beginning to end.

Annoyingly I was unable to find any tracklisting anywhere, even after a comprehensive search on the web. Perhaps these pieces don’t require titles though, it’s enough that the individual moods created by each piece can send the listener on far-flung mental journeys uninhibited or restricted by mere words. This is especially true of the last track, my personal favourite; a mid-tempo percussive stomp and wail eventually segueing into ethereal vocals and soaringly cosmic keyboards that could serve as a soundtrack to some astral projection to the farthest reaches of either Inner or Outer Space.

Okay, so I’m prepared to concede that not all live recordings work against themselves and that some indeed are enhanced by it. I also concede that it would have been a VERY interesting experience to have been a member of the audience, even though poets and high-arty types aren’t a part of my natural constituency – I find it difficult to remain sociable in the rarefied and stifling atmosphere of such gatherings. If nothing else it would have been fascinating to have witnessed the reactions of the people attending. Consequently this is one of those rarities; it’s actually going on my very short list of good live albums.