Customer Reviews

Ylang

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Ylang is named for a SE Asian flowering tree valued for its oil used in perfumes. Like the plant, the music here is exotic, fragrant, complex and decorative. Robert Rich releases two different flavors of music; one is the long languid drones of Somnium and Trances & Drones, the other is the pounding rhythms and ethnic instrumentation of Bestiary and Rainforest. Ylang is of the second variety.

Joining him are a couple percussionists, a bansuri flautist, a cellist, a violinist and a wordless vocalist. The overall effect is not dissimilar to Patrick O'Hearn, Michael Brook, Mark Isham or David Sylvian.

If you like your music rich, verdant, organic and (here's the word I was searching for) orchidaceous then Ylang is an excellent find.

To make it clear, reviewing Robert Rich is a quite big honor for me, because it was his legendary "Trances/Drones" 2CD that was a turning point for me around 1995 during my musical explorations. Maestro Robert Rich returned with "Ylang" in February of 2010, so almost three years passed since his previous solo album "Illumination", but in the meantime few co-works with Markus Reuter, Ian Boddy and Faryus were released. With "Ylang" Robert delivers some of the most exotic perfumes as he did on masterworks like "Propagation" or especially "Seven Veils". Teamed with no less than 8 other virtuosos on drums (Ricky Carter), mrdungam-percussion instrument from India (Sakthivel Muruganandhan), bansuri (Sunilkumar Sankarapillai), guitar (Haroun Serang), voice (Emily Bezar), violin (Forrest Fang), cello (Hans Christian), upright bass (Paul Olguin)... plus some parrots, Robert Rich exlores another absolutely exciting and exotic territories by melting together various ingredients like ambient, jazz, world music (Carnatic music of India), post rock with his trademarking sounds of flute, lap steel guitar, percussions, piano and electronics. Maybe the Middle East flavour is not that strong as it was presented on "Seven Veils", but the music still sounds very fresh, unique and essential. Each contribution is carefully crafted and detailed, very evocative, expressive and colorful too due to appearing guests. Nine rhythm-charged oriental compositions offer spectacular experience for any world fusion/ambient fan. I think it's impossible to point the most notable pieces here, because each contribution is very impressive and ear catching and even if very varied and rich, the overall mood is very complex. Robert Rich is a sonic innovator always searching for new challenges in his music and "Ylang" is again loaded with filigree musicianship. All wrapped in beautiful 6-panel digipak (designed by John Bergin) with audiophile-quality sound, "Ylang" is a true piece of art for me!!! Big thanks to all involved!!!

Richard Gürtler (Bratislava, Slovakia)