Customer Reviews

Covenant

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Leave it to my friend Steve from FissionPile.com to ruin anything science fiction/spirituality oriented. Steve talked through the entire movie Stargate, telling me how their time travel techniques weren't really possible, and he and Roberto from martial arts destroyed The Matrix.

I was enthralled by the pictures in the sleeve of Wally Brill's The Covenant of white-coated scientists examining kabbalah outlines. Furthermore, the track A Loop In Time is about "people in little suits from the book of Ezekiel". I couldn't wait to play it for Steve so I could win our ongoing argument, but he was utterly turned off. Not only were the kabbalah symbols out of context, he said, but the science references all outdated.

In spite of Steve, The Covenant remains a highly engaging CD, specifically the track Rtzeh. I played it on the show and a lady called up breathlessly telling me how it was the most beautiful and amazing piece of music she ever heard in her life. I love playing it back to back with the original Gershon Sirota version with is available on Great Voices of the Synagogue.

And that's the magic of this album. The former producer of Ofra Haza and other well-known Jewish artists took a collection on old 78 rmp cantorial records and remixed them. The music is electronic/techno/ambient in nature. Lots of synthesizers and beats give the operatic Biblical Hebrew vocals a haunting and hypnotic sound similar to Deep Forest or Enigma.

Well-loved cantors who ruled in the 1920's and 1930s such as Pierre Pinchik,. Samuel Malavsky and Ben Zion Kapov-Kagan reign again in a modern electronica way. Wally Brill justifies it by comparing it to the canters who performed outside the synagogues in the opera houses of Europe in days of past.

My favorites are Kiddush Le-Shabbat which was included on several compilation CDs and A Typical Day, which features the spoken word of Holocaust survivor Helen Lazar. The later is a hard-hitting track pared with the music, if you can bear to listen to her story straight through.

If you don't mind a little pseudo-science Deepak Chopra spirituality in the liner notes, and just listen to the music then this might just be the most amazing CD you have ever heard in your life. Close your eyes and the voices of your great-grandfathers will pierce right through your soul...

Perhaps as an american, non-observant jew who has undergone a pull toward exploring his roots for the first time in 30 years, I may be somewhat biased in my feelings about this album. Nonetheless, one need not be jewish to appreciate the awe-inspiring sounds Wally Brill has created here. He has harnessed the raw emotion of jewish cantorial vocals, applying it on top of brilliant, world-beat rhythms and passionate, entrancing melodies. Believe me, my words don't come close to doing complete justice to this music... but this album has affected me on a deep spiritual level - and my guess is, if you are a "lost jew" but always felt that certain "something", it will do the same for you. If you are not jewish, this album is an excellent modern-day musical primer of sorts to understanding jewish soul.

Wally Brill has sampled a treasure-trove of the great Cantors (Jewish liturgical singers) of the '20s, '30s, & '40s. The Covenant integrates these remarkable vocals with new instrumentation which draws on elements of world, ambient, electronic, and dub music.
"Much of my favorite music and art reflects the artist's desire to contact that which he or she holds sacred: God, the Supreme, the Divine...," begins the liner notes from Wally Brill's The Covenant. Brill utilizes sacred Hebrew chants originally recorded on 78's in the early part of the century and combines them with modern day electroinca and trip-hop beats; resulting in Jewish cantors chanting their praises over slow, thumping drum tracks, laced with heavy basslines and low-range melodies. He has taken complete cantoral vocal performances, and woven them into rich instrumental tapestries consisting of tablas, digeridoo, trumpet, Tibetan singing bowls and the unique contributions of avante-ambient guitar master David Torn.

Standout tracks on this release include "A Typical Day", an emotional description by a 12-year-old Holocaust survivor of a day in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Brill's production credits include work with such diverse artists as UK punks 999 and Chelsea, electronic pioneer Thomas Dolby and Israeli world beat superstar Ofra Haza.

-- review from calabashmusic site which also has downloads

Wonderful music compilation of the Cantors and modern electronic styles. Cut #2 (A Typical Day) could be cut entirely. Too depressing. Who needs to be reminded of a page in history to that degree. It is a little self serving. Other than that, the music is really great. If the music company [Six Degrees] continues with their quality of music as is shown on this CD and others, they will be a real find.

Wally Brill has sampled a treasure-trove of the great Cantors (Jewish liturgical singers) of the '20s, '30s, & '40s. The Covenant integrates these remarkable vocals with new instrumentation which draws on elements of world, ambient, electronic, and dub music.
"Much of my favorite music and art reflects the artist's desire to contact that which he or she holds sacred: God, the Supreme, the Divine...," begins the liner notes from Wally Brill's The Covenant. Brill utilizes sacred Hebrew chants originally recorded on 78's in the early part of the century and combines them with modern day electroinca and trip-hop beats; resulting in Jewish cantors chanting their praises over slow, thumping drum tracks, laced with heavy basslines and low-range melodies. He has taken complete cantoral vocal performances, and woven them into rich instrumental tapestries consisting of tablas, digeridoo, trumpet, Tibetan singing bowls and the unique contributions of avante-ambient guitar master David Torn.

Standout tracks on this release include "A Typical Day", an emotional description by a 12-year-old Holocaust survivor of a day in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Brill's production credits include work with such diverse artists as UK punks 999 and Chelsea, electronic pioneer Thomas Dolby and Israeli world beat superstar Ofra Haza.

-- review from calabashmusic site which also has downloads

some of these songs, infused with a middle eastern beat, were lovely, combined as they were with cantorial singing. Others, however, were just semi-pretentious (but earnest) filler. Worth a try.

Wally Brill's Covenant samples solemn vocal performances of some of the great European cantors, and surfs them on waves of synthesized pop-schlock. The concept is good to start. Many of us were attracted to this by the inclusion of one track on the Knitting Factory's "Guide for the Perplexed" - a compilation of Jewish themed music experiments. However, the complete CD is not the respectful or even serious treatment that was expected. Theodor Adorno wrote in 1949, "after Auschwitz, to write poetry is an act of barabarism." What then can we make of Wally Brill, who takes the spoken memory of an elderly woman recalling being told of her parents cruel murder while incarcerated as a small, frightened child in a Nazi death camp, and puts a jumpy funk drum track behind it? What's worse than barbarism? To trivialize destruction and incomprehensibly scaled acts of violence and bullying of the elderly, the young and the innocent ... this is unfortunately what Covenant accomplishes. The rest of the tracks are ho-hum, and lack empathy for the voices or imagination for the listener. But track 2 seals the deal. Find yourself a compilation of cantorial vocals first (see: "Mysteries of the Sabbath" on Yazoo) and see if you feel the need for rhythm tracks.

No one in their right mind could possibly come up with a contemporary album that blends early 20th century Jewish liturgical chants with early 21st century punk and hard rock. But then, there's nothing "right" about the incredibly imaginative mind of Wally Brill, a mind that dares to tread where no musician has ventured before. While the rest of us were fast asleep in the stupor of everyday standard music, mad scientist Wally Brill was in his tiny music lab busily resurrecting old dusty cantorial records with the Life Force of synthesizers, drums, electric violins and futuristic outer space noises. The San Francisco/London-based genius has contributed to world music in general and to Jewish music in particular a fresh, vibrant, energetic sound that succeeds in echoing the past while inspiring the future. "The Covenant" skillfully revives the sound of an eastern European Jewish culture now buried beneath the ashes of the Holocaust, with the life giving breath of hope drawn from the promise of the New Millennium. "The Covenant" is a remarkable work of art that will have you dancing like a meschuggeneh, meditating like an ascetic, and intoxicate you higher than any six-pack of beer or case of Manischewitz Wine. Brilliant!

This is the first CD of of such genre I have come acros and the combination of old music and modern rythms has really blown me away. Although it may be overpretentios and not lively in places, songs such Rtzeh are not to be underestimated. Rtzeh really carries in itself the depth of the Jewish tradition and the intensity of the guitar and electronica arrangements - in the best traditions of the "Last Temptation of Christ" music. Generally a highly advisable CD - a wonderful spiritual experience.