Dance of Seven Veils

Newband (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 21, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Music & Arts Program
• ASIN: B000001OHI
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,254 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Castor and Pollux

2. Southern Ephemera

3. Archipelago

4. Dance Of The Seven Veils

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars OK-ish, September 10, 2008

By 

Perry Townsend (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dance of Seven Veils (Audio CD)

Well I bought this purely for "Castor & Pollux", hoping for a better performance of this masterwork than the one recently converted from Partch's original Gate Five series. It was A BIT better than that, but that Gate Five "Castor" is very sloppy & basically only worth having for archival reasons. Newband's performance was certainly cleaner than that but no more inspired. Phrasing didn't have much fire or motivation, and this is a SERIOUSLY jumping piece of dance music. It seemed very "off the page."

The only performance I'm aware of that does justice to "Castor" is the one on the long out-of-print 1969 Columbia "The World of Harry Partch" LP, which will tragically never get released on CD due to some silly legal squabble. On that Partch-supervised recording, his ensemble had fully matured from the Gate Five days, the recording quality is excellent, the performance clean as a whistle *AND* it rocks out joyfully, just like it should. I wish the modern-day descendants of his ensemble could muster half of that kind of energy.

The other works on this CD are non-Partch, and sadly, unremarkable.