Brown, Chris / Talking Drum
Album: Talking Drum   Collection:General
Artist:Brown, Chris   Added:May 2005
Label:Pogus Productions  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2005-08-07 Pull Date: 2005-10-09
Week Ending: Sep 18 Aug 14
Airplays: 1 1

Recent Airplay
1. Sep 15, 2005: Safe/Safeless
Rumba Kata, Havana, Cuba
2. Aug 13, 2005: On The Warpath
Honda Bay, Palawan, Philippi

Album Review
Sadie O.
Reviewed 2005-08-07
Brown, Chris - Talking Drum
Reviewed by Sadie O. 8/5/05
Experimental, recordings of ambient noises and occasional hand drums made in various locations around the world. No song structure. Here's the premise: "Binaural motion recordings composed as a dialogue of distances. Live recordings of music for electronic network music ensemble juxtaposed with location recordings of traditional music and environmental soundscapes." Huh? Might make an interesting counterpoint to an electronic music show, since many of the original sounds are natural rather than computer-generated, but that's about it, IMO - it's formless and arty and pretty damn pretentious. Guess what? "Hammering, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey" sounds just like hammering in any big, echo-y building. Tracks tend to run together. Most of the Bali and Cuba tracks can be listened to without needing to kill anything - if anything, try track 14, or at least the first few minutes. No discernable FCC.
1. unstructured hand drums and street sounds
2. louder with some echo, varying percussion noises
3. various gamelan-ish sounds
4. bells and shakers, fading in and out
5. hammering coming from various spacial sources, echoes
6. hisses and chirps, very quiet near end
7. burbles, thumps, and violins
8. hand drums and chants, almost semi-structured
9. booms and bloops, occasionally rhythmical, silence near end
10. ambient street noise and chatter - for 6 and a half minutes! Sheesh!
11. random percussion and perhaps marimba? Oh, and a trumpet.
12. hand drums and chants - see track 8
13. various handdrums, not necessarily playing together
14. gamelan procession - almost musical! Several seconds near-silence at end.
15. more random booms and bells
16. like track 13, only short
17. see tracks 8 and 12 - fades into "fireworks" towards end
18. "fireworks" without the whistling sounds
19. mostly silent, some bird chirps
20. ditto, except these chirps are apparently frogs
21. ditto, except these are apparently vultures. I couldn't hear a muezzin
22. a rooster crow
23. random noises and formless "poetry" (only English spoken on record)
24. see tracks 13 and 16
25. constipated trumpets and sax
26. random tones and percussion sounds, recorded in a tunnel?
27. less musical than other Bali stuff, mostly ambient w/ distant gamelan



Track Listing
1. Rumba Quinto, Havana, Cuba   14. Cremation Procession Downbea
2. Invention #3, Headlands, Sau   15. Invention #1, Headlands, Sau
3. Cremation Procession, Bali   16. Talking Drum, Groningen, Net
4. Tennis Court, Cnmat, Berkele   17. Chango, Havana, Cuba
5. Hammering, Hagia Sophia, Ist   18. Fireworks, Ioiolo, Philippin
6. Honda Bay, Palawan, Philippi   19. Hawaii Bird Park, Hawaii
7. Invention #2, Iear/Rpi, Troy   20. Frogs in Irrigation Canals,
8. Rumba Kata, Havana, Cuba   21. Vultures and Muezzin, Istanb
9. Invention #5, Headlands, Sau   22. Rooster, Boracay, Philippine
10. Quiapo Market District, Mani   23. Mouth Full of Fire, Market S
11. Invention #2, Calarts, Valen   24. Talking Drum, Isea '95, Mont
12. Mariwo Chant, Havana, Cuba   25. Invention #4, Univ. of Illin
13. Talking Drum, Beanbender's,   26. Invention #4, Headlands, Sau
  27. Cremation Flame, Bali