Customer Reviews

Painted Desert

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

 

 

Three people made this: drum machine manipulator Iuke Mori and guitarists Robert Quine and Marc Ribot. With titles like "Mojave" and "Santa Ana Excursion" you would expect evocations of the West, and you wouldn't be disappointed. The tunes are pretty simple affairs but the guitarists display beautiful tone and Iuke Mori provides the right kind of propulsion. I'd rate this a classic of '90s instrumental music, right up there with Tortoise's "TNT" and Peter Scherer's "Cronologia." In fact, in this era of gloppy vocal music and too much melisma, albums like this are probably the only thing left to enjoy. No words. Quine you may know from his stint with Lou Reed, or maybe from "Kid With The Replacable Head," that great Richard Hell track from the '80s. Ribot is great too; all his albums are highly recommended.

If Edd S. Hurt's review is still around, it is fairly descriptive - Quine and Ribot do play beautifully (and none too noisily, if anyone is worried about that) and Mori does offer a "propulsive" percussive backing, which is extremely rhythmic and linear compared to some of her Tzadik stuff, say -- though it's still rich and complex and enjoyable. The only addition I'd make to Mr. Hurt's review, in fact, is that the CD was produced by John Zorn and reminds me a LOT of some of the FILMWORKS stuff of his -- with Mori playing the part of Cyro Baptista. Zorn fans will love this disc.

I have a lot of trouble getting this disc out of my CD player. The format is very simple --- drum machine + two electric guitars. The drum machine sounds as natural as the guitars; Ikue Mori's beats are the opposite of techno. There's one noisy song ("Gundown") that breaks the spell for about two minutes.