Ray Lema - The Dream of the Gazelle
Ray Lema
The Dream of the Gazelle
1996
I first heard the calm tenor of Ray Lema on the Afro-artrock masterpiece The Rythmatist by ex-Policeman Stewart Copeland, a fact I mention very chance I get (because that album is one of the most underappreciated gems in my collection). His voice still sounds good, but on his solo album The Dream of the Gazelle, its boatanchored with some lame tracks, starting with the opener, M'Lizi. The female vocals sound pained, and his own contributions forced. The weak operatic female vocals in the close of Third Movement is also grating. In general, Lema's vocals sound great, but the supporting female vocals on a few tracks are just distracting and/or serious blammo.
The good news is that there is less grit than gold. N'Totila is a quiet ballad with strings not unlike something you would hear on a Beatles record, but a bit more sparse and sung in Bantu. Twa Taka Nini starts like something Ennio Morricone would write for a spy film, but gets up into something oddly sounding like township meets tango, with a stalking piano vamp. There is actually a sense of Morricone in a few spots here, but more on that later. Circovol is four minutes of --for all intents and purposes -- chamber music, the type you would see on the ECM label. The last half dozen tracks would also fit ECM, except it is a more ambitious suite of pieces that conjoin Avro Part meets Sub-Saharan Africa, with strings and delicate use of piano and percussion of many stripes to fill out the compositions. Fourth Movement is almost back to the Morricone bit, with a Gunsmoke in Brazzaville effect. The closer is a spontaneous sounding solo piano bit called Post-Scriptum that closes things cleanly.
The Dream of the Gazelle
1996
I first heard the calm tenor of Ray Lema on the Afro-artrock masterpiece The Rythmatist by ex-Policeman Stewart Copeland, a fact I mention very chance I get (because that album is one of the most underappreciated gems in my collection). His voice still sounds good, but on his solo album The Dream of the Gazelle, its boatanchored with some lame tracks, starting with the opener, M'Lizi. The female vocals sound pained, and his own contributions forced. The weak operatic female vocals in the close of Third Movement is also grating. In general, Lema's vocals sound great, but the supporting female vocals on a few tracks are just distracting and/or serious blammo.
The good news is that there is less grit than gold. N'Totila is a quiet ballad with strings not unlike something you would hear on a Beatles record, but a bit more sparse and sung in Bantu. Twa Taka Nini starts like something Ennio Morricone would write for a spy film, but gets up into something oddly sounding like township meets tango, with a stalking piano vamp. There is actually a sense of Morricone in a few spots here, but more on that later. Circovol is four minutes of --for all intents and purposes -- chamber music, the type you would see on the ECM label. The last half dozen tracks would also fit ECM, except it is a more ambitious suite of pieces that conjoin Avro Part meets Sub-Saharan Africa, with strings and delicate use of piano and percussion of many stripes to fill out the compositions. Fourth Movement is almost back to the Morricone bit, with a Gunsmoke in Brazzaville effect. The closer is a spontaneous sounding solo piano bit called Post-Scriptum that closes things cleanly.
posted by theloniusfunk at 8:43 PM
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