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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
State of Unfulfilled Expectations, January 31, 2003
The Bottom Line: Zaman excels when he fully embraces fusion blending jazzy sax, funky guitar, drones, and tablas. Unfortunately, he doesn't do it on every song. State of Bengal is the stage name of fusion DJ extraordinaire Sam Zaman, member of the hot Asian Underground scene in London. Zaman blends jazz, funk, techno, and Indian power pop together in surprising and often eminently pleasing ways. He has remixed some of the greats, including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and appeared on several popular world fusion compilation CDs. His singles and remixes created a pent-up demand and high expectations for his full-length release, which seemed to take forever to come out. Visual Audio is that first release. However, it fails to reach expectations with some bad tracks mixed amongst the good ones and alas, two of the good ones were previously released as singles. When it is at its best, Visual Audio is chill out music on the order of Thievery Corporation. It's ambient with a healthy dose of funk rhythms. All-in-all though, the album is uneven and at times uninspired. The album starts slow. While the opening track, "Flight IC408" is a favorite of many (was previously released on the Anokha compilation) and is fun and interesting, but no song should have as long and slow a beginning as this one does. It begins with one of the longest samples in recording history and it is well over a minute before anything really interesting happens in the song. Once it finally does, the Indian-styled keyboards, syncopated drums, and funky vocals are fun in a casual way. Some great musical ideas here, but could use a good remix. The second track, "Elephant Ride," is, sorry to say, just too repetitive and uninteresting. It has a good central rift, in true Asian Underground style. Yet, no rift, no matter how good, should be repeated for four minutes. Zaman never explores the theme he sets up. Again, a great candidate for a remix. Finally, the third track, "Burn Your Toes" gives us what we are looking for: a cool mix of female south Asian vocals, new wave jazz and scat vocals. Mournful saxophone opens "Chittagong Chill" and, joined by a light syncopated drum line, carries the song for several minutes. Then it suddenly gives way to the frenzy of Indian vocal percussion. As you might guess, Indian vocal percussion is mimicking drums with the voice and some practitioners produce amazing rhythms this way (de dak ka dee doe ta tee doo doo) A massive track. "Taki Naki" is a strange little number, an homage to cheesy Indian pop music. Common to many south and southeast Asian music is a woman singing falsetto creating this incredibly high pitched voice. "Taki Naki" samples a female falsetto and blends it with harmonium and tablas. It's a catchy and fun tune. "Red Earth" and "Hunters" follow with spacey downtempo grooves. They are built on syncopated percussion loops clearly Indian in origin. Good but not great tracks, suffering again from over repetitiveness. The album descends into a creative desert starting with "Ek Bullet." The track throws down some drum-and-bass, which is probably above average but still suffers from the repetitive mind-numbing boredom endemic to the genre. "Rama Communication" goes psychedelic with drones, flutes, and spacey vocals and though Zaman almost ruins it with a clichéd stutter vocal effect the song survives. "Hectic City" actually is ruined, first by stutters and poor wailing vocals giving way to unoriginal American drum-and-bass. I don't know what Zaman was thinking on this track. Just when you've given up hope, Zaman rediscovers his Pakistani roots with "Music Is." Ahhhhhh, here is the song that fulfills all of Zaman's promise. With the vocal line "Music is the only language I really know," intermingled with sitar-sounding strings, drones, and tabla, it closes out the album in high style. While there are periods of tedium in this album, you can tell that this happens only when Zaman leaves his heritage behind and falls into run-of-the-mill Western rhythms. Zaman really excels when he fully embraces fusion blending jazzy sax, funky guitar, drones, and tablas. He is gifted with some great ideas, but he has yet to show that he is capable of more than remixing other artists and creating a few decent songs.
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~ Ananda Shankar
~ DJ Cheb I Sabbah
~ Talvin Singh
~ DJ Cheb I Sabbah
by State of Bengal 
