Found at: http://trance.net/article/articleprint/241/-1/4/
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Medicine Drum "Original Face"
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Top level
Music reviews
Medicine Drum is out with their third album! As their last album, this is also released on Cyber Octave Records, which is a division of Higher Octave Records, based in California, USA. Medicine Drum is the talented Chris Deckker, Alex Newman, Kenji Williams and Irina Mikailova. They are famous for their incredible live performances on festivals around the world, like Morocco 2001, Burning Man in Nevada, the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, Mt. Fuji Festival in Japan etc. You can read about the history of the band in the cd cover.
Medicine Drum "Original Face" Cyber Octave Records 2003 (COCD42237)
1. Original Face
2. Seralem
3. Katakali
4. Funk Chakra
5. Dub Stream
6. Serpents Tale
7. Kaiku
8. Passage Of Time
9. Ancient Analog
First out is a beautiful tribal trance track with flute, tribal drums and some Arabian male vocals. After a few minutes we get some beautiful female vocals by Irina Mikaliova from Russia. She has joined the band since 1998. She is also singing on some of the tracks in the ABA Structure album Epic released on Fungus Productions 2002. She was nominated in the Grammy awards in the World Music category... A groovy tribal trance track. Track 2 is a chilled mystical track with beautiful vocals by Irina, violin by Kenji Williams (ABA Structure) and electronics by Chris Deckker and Alex Newman. A fantastic nice track. Kenji is a master on his violin and Irina really sings beautiful. Track 3 is another trance track. It starts pumping pretty fast. It has some tribal influences and a nice melody comes into the track pretty soon. I have heard a vocal version of this track on their live performance at Morocco 2001, but here are no vocals. Track 4 is a chilled dub track. Still with some tribal drums and mystical sound picture. You also get some rapping in this track! Pretty unusual from these guys. Vocals are made by Tevya Jones and Suzanne Sterling.
Track 5 is deeper dub with nice electronic sounds and melodies. Chilling psychedelic listening music which reminds me a bit of Entheogenic! Track 6 starts very floating with nice vocals by Irina. Then we get some tribal rhythms. Relaxing tribal trance. Track 7 is a short beautiful ambient track. Track 8 has relaxing piano, tribal drums and nice groovy electronic sounds. Very beautiful chill out. The last track on the album is a trance track. This one sounds more like good old goa trance! They have collaborated with Andy Guthrie and Mark Owens on this one. Nice to hear such melodic goa trance again!
This album is really nice! If you like the mixture of tribal trance and world music, this sure is something for you.
PK
