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