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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lounge essential for both Exotica beginners and experts, April 4, 2005
This review is from: Voodoo (Audio CD)
This is a required Exotica album, yet it's very overlooked, most often because of its lack of availaibility over the years. Robert Drasnin was a composer for films & TV shows when in late 1959, Tops Records tried to cash in on the Exotica craze and asked him to dash off a quickie jungle-lounge album. Having never played this style of music before, Drasnin recorded this album in just two sessions. Although inexperienced with Exotica, Drasnin's "Voodoo" album became a recording that many lounge lovers now regard as indispensible, despite it's nonappearance over many decades. This is just as necessary as Martin Denny's "Exotica, Vol. 1" and Arthur Lyman's "Taboo" album (Drasnin would later go on to arrange and co-write two Martin Denny albums).
Dionysus Records finally re-released this on CD, but with a different album cover. The original cover photo had an attractive woman in a leopard-skin fur bikini dancing between two sitting bongo players, all in front of a jungle backdrop. Pickwick Records has released a Robert Drasnin album known as "Percussion Exotique", which is basically a truncated version of this album with two tracks removed. "Voodoo" measures in at 33 minutes, and all 12 tunes are Drasnin originals, featuring then-unknown (film composer) John Williams on piano. Drasin's take on exotica is a steady, middle-of-the-road approach; emphasizing flutes, clarinets, vocals and throbbing percussion. If an hour-long record is just too much for you, like the many 2-for-1 albums available on CD from Les Baxter, this might be the exotica appetizer you need. It's music made for summer evenings in need of a little retro ambience.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best 'exotica' CD I've ever heard!, May 11, 2006
This review is from: Voodoo (Audio CD)
This lush Robert Drasnin album is a gem, a superb and sublime example of exotica music that, in my opinion, far surpasses the works of Les Baxter, Martin Denny & Arthur Lyman. The recording is fabulous and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dave Pell, who produced the original recording session. Also deserving of a deep bow of gratitude for this reissue is Len Horowitz at H.R.S. who did the vinyl transfer, David Schultz who did the digital mastering supervised by the maestro himself, Robert Drasnin, and last but by no means least Skip Heller, who produced the reissue, and his "co-conspirator" Ted Gerike. These folks of "Lost Episodes" at Dionysius Records deserve our thanks for making a CD that sounds like its original recording session was just last week, with nary a hiss or faintness to it. Listening to it one could close ones eyes and imagine that the musicians are in the room with you mere feet away -- the recording is THAT GOOD! Without this reissue of a classic we'd all be listening to the many and sometimes repetitive releases from Martin Denny et. al., and while those are certainly wonderful and definitely part of my collection, this one is the best. If you only get one 'exotica' album, make it this one!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I am so glad to see the original release on CD at last, June 22, 2004
This review is from: Voodoo (Audio CD)
"Voodoo" apparently has been around on CD since 1996 but somehow I missed it. Still, I was lucky enough to find a version of it under the title "Exotic Excursion" but truncated by a couple of tracks, I believe. So to get the entire original album and the great original exotica album artwork missing from the re-release are just two of the three reasons I am buying this CD. The third is the music! To me, Les Baxter remains the king of exotica and much of what Drasnin does here is very Baxteresque. I have no complaints however, in that the main thing this music does is what all of the best exotica music does. It takes me to another place if I let it, provides good background music for anything under the sun or stars, and provides a great road rage remedy as well. Here's to more original exotica releases from the 1950's and early 1960's, and shame on Capitol for not releasing by now all of Les Baxter's exotica albums on that label, two per CD. However, if anyone at Capitol is reading, you are forgiven as long as you get right on it!
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