Brooklyn Babylon

– General Description: Highly recommended. Tight and professional. Kurt Weill "The Silver Lake" reincarnated with minor key melodies. Very dystopian and stylized, if you are on medication it might lead to feeling as though the police-state has arrived. But if you like that kind of thing, it's entertaining. Great to hear the flugelhorn again. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Next Wave Festival in 2011.
– FCC Compliant: YES
– Recommended Tracks: 4, 10, 12
– Track Reviews:
1. (5:01) Prologue - oomp-pah-pah sound behind minor key melodies
2. (6:13) The Neighborhood - pulsing background behind minor key melodies, might make you paranoid
3. (1:07) Interlude No. 1. Infuse - jazzy, club sound
4. ****(2:39) An Invitation - curiouser and curiouser grew Alice, very fun
5. (1:15) Interlude No. 2. Enjoin - haunting spare piece in the upper registers
6. (3:44) The Tallest Tower in the World - the elephants have entered and are calling, repeating bass and percussive motive allows the horns to go wild above before calming and then surging again, flutes and piccolos tweet before the elephants enter again
7. (1:15) Interlude No. 3. Enthrall - tango feel
8. (5:03) Construction + Destruction - morse code feel behind unison horns building to a dreamscape, percussion leads to more electric feel of chaos
9. (1:13) Interlude No. 4. Bewail - solid block chords by horns with fluid trumpet above
10. ****(4:34) Builders - faster tempo start to then slow gong-like procession, Alice has fallen down down into a well, much reverb, then it pulls back and sax cries
11. (1:35) Interlude No. 5. Unmoored - acoustic guitar enters with a lullaby
12. ****(5:25) Missing Parts - uptempo, latin feel with syncopated percussion and melody that then start sliding dynamically
13. (0:59) Interlude No. 6. Arise - oomp-pah-pah returns, clowns at the circus
14. (4:38) Grand Opening - stars-and-stripes band feel and variation, then a pulsing until breaking loose, back to oomp-pah-pah, then chaos, then warbly dreams
15. (0:41) Interlude No. 7. Aloft - brief flute solo
16. (3:18) Coney Island - repetitive sound bed made for electric sax and guitar to sing above
17. (4:32) Epilogue - kind of stodgy and heavy, arpeggiation over block chords