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CD Reviews

TRANSFERENCE: Twelve Bands from NYC to Albany
LEOPARD RECORDINGS, 2003

One need listen no further than Transference: Twelve Bands from NYC to Albany to hear the sound of the regional underground rock scene exploding. Audio architect Jimmy Lonesome, who runs Leopard Studio in Stone Ridge, has heroically recorded, produced, and compiled a dozen of the area's most inventive bands.

Standout sounds include the mind-bending prog-surf of Purchase band Skeletonbreath and the angular, catchy funk-pop of Brooklyn's Year of the Mule. Closer to home are The Kiss Ups from Rosendale, who contribute "Chill," a punchy noise-punk blast.

Albany bands make a strong and diverse showing, including a candy-coated, hyper-punk moment from Kitty Little, driving indie rock from The Highsocks, complex cacophony from female fronted Struction, and a frenetic art-rock flare-up from Amazing Plaid. The New Paltz scene is also represented with a wistful indie ballad from The Rules, raw rock shape-shifting from Macaulay Culprits, and avant-garde synth-spazz from The Shadowmaps.

Transference demonstrates what a great underground scene is capable of given the
resources to realize its resonance. Check out www.leopardstudio.com.

—Zac Shaw

BIG SKY ENSEMBLE: Big Sky Ensemble
WORKMANIC RECORDS, 2003

I became acquainted with the talents of two members of The Big Sky Ensemble—namely, Thomas Workman and Dean Jones—back in the mid-to-late '90s when they were blowing a mean conch shell at a Mountain Laurel Waldorf School open house and performing with funky, funny, innovative bands, including The Fighting McKenzies and the all-too-shortlived For Sale By Owner Orchestra. Now Workman's grabbed his tuba, didgeridoo, and flutes, and Jones has taken up his trombone and balafon to join with other local masters of quirkiness to create a unique world music collective known as The Big Sky Ensemble.

Along with sax/flautists Peter Buettner and Bill Ylitalo, drummer/percussionist Brian Farmer, and African drummer/balafon player Tim Allen, Workman and Jones have devised an act that is as full of humor and joie de vivre as it is musically complex and inventive. Their focus allows them to blend lesser-known musical styles—Turkish and Bulgarian odd-metered tunes, Jamaican mento, Indonesian dangdut, and South African township jive—with a New Orleans second line style that’s wild, sweet, and original.

The band's music is created to give "a feeling of a different time and place," says Workman. Judging from the reaction of several people who’ve happened upon this reviewer's repeated playing of the band's latest five-track demo, Big Sky Ensemble is as much about making listeners laugh as it is about getting them up on their feet. For more info on their upcoming, full-length CD, call 687-0733.
—Susan Piperato

KARMA PAKSHI CHANT: his holiness the 17th karmapa
KHAEON WORLD MUSIC, 2002

Almost everyone who visits Woodstock knows of the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra KTD) monastery. KTD has released a recording from the Woodstock festival of the Karma Kagyu Lineage—the Kamtsang Kagyu Sangha Monlam gathering—that is held yearly in Bodhgaya, India. This CD features the first appearance of His Holiness The 17th Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje since his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet on horseback the year before.

The chants and music are melodious, hypnotic as heartbeats, and evoke the direct experience of sitting with hundreds of maroon-robed monks, intoning sacred Sanskrit mantras as their predecessors have done for hundreds of years. A deeply relaxing CD of anthropological field recordings, Karma Pakshi Chant is a 70-minute vacation with His Holiness Karmapa and his monks. For more information, please visit www.kagyu.org.

—Shiv Mirabito