[ home ] : [ press ] : [ magical sounds review ]

    

the magical sounds of banco de gaia review
(by craig gaines)
1999

if you are into electronic music of any sort, don’t read this review.

anyone who knows anything about electronic music will hate me for writing this, because i can fit all my electronic music knowledge into my pinkie toe. i’d like to keep the number of people who hate me to a minimum.

consider yourself warned.

on to the review: i like the album. from a bit of research, i found out this is something called ambient or ambient dub music. it’s all very relaxing and earthy.

what I like about the magical sounds [of banco de gaia] is its use of human sounds. most of the electronic music i’ve heard at friends’ houses is full of bleeps. while some of it is cool, it starts to bug out my uninitiated ear after a while. banco de gaia - a.k.a. toby brooks - weaves human vocals and other natural sounds with smart beats and a few bleeps of his own. the result is a sound that’s more inviting than challenging.

in past records, banco de gaia has interspersed in its music traditional sounds from the middle east and other cultures. that philosophy hasn’t changed on this latest album. it will take either an anthropologist or a record executive to tell you exactly what culture Brooks exploits here, but the music is full of wails, chants and shouts.

on the album’s seventh track, glove puppet, banco de gaia seamlessly segues from some bad-ass i-don’t-know-what-you-call-it, to a ghosty little string thing. the effect is both calming and disturbing. the song is all capped off with vincent price’s evil laugh from michael jackson’s thriller.

  credits

reproduced without permission from state news. to be used for private and research use only. original article is here.

© copyright 1999-2002 gavin stok. all rights reserved