MALI MUSIC

You know how every once in a great while something really good that you weren’t expecting just finds its way to you? Well, that’s the way I felt when I received Mali Music. When I first opened the package, I wasn’t really sure what I had just been given. The front of the envelope let me know that it came from Astralwerks, which sends us primarily techno and club music. But this was something different. I quickly peeled the plastic off the CD. Wow! This was really different; especially for Astralwerks. I pulled the press release out. Mali Music is the product of everybody’s favorite Gorilla (and Blur frontman), Damon Albarn. In July of 2000, Albarn traveled to Mali in West Africa. He had been invited there by a charity organization that hoped to raise awareness with music. He started to record music with Mali’s top musicians. Playing mostly melodica with them, Albarn catalogued hours and hours of music. He then returned to his studio in London and began production work. Some of the work remained untouched, while some of it was reworked to include layers of different genres of music, including electronica and reggae. The result is amazing. The first track on the disc, “Spoons”, is one of the best orchestrated pieces I’ve heard recently. Haunting, thick, and heavy, this is a great track to start with. There really isn’t a bad track on the entire album, but be sure to play close attention to the very Gorillaz-esque “Le Relax”, the soft and slow guitar strumming of “4AM at Toumanis”, and the experimental layering and piano work of “Institut National Des Arts”. If you’re tired of your CD collection, and are looking for a breath of fresh air, you can find it in Mali Music.