| I hate dancing, and I hate dance clubs, yet I can say in all honestly that if I ever found a club that played the sort of music found on racetothebottom, I would happily go there every night. Reaching out across such social divides probably never even crossed Andre Afram Asmar's mind when he was making racetothebottom, but it's a fairly accurate reflection of the music found within. Throughout, Asmar proves the adage about genius stealing - he melds a wide variety of cultural influences into something that sounds truly universal. A map in the liner notes places China very close to Europe and Africa, and that's as good an indication of the soundscape occupied by racetothebottom as any sort of track-by-track analysis. Every corner of the globe seems to be represented by the sounds thrown into this mix: Puerto Rican timbales, West African djembes, Middle Eastern dourbekas and ouds, Brazilian surdos, cuicas and berimbaus, not to mention a wide variety of strings, wind instruments, guitars and keyboards, and vocals, which come in all manner of languages. On top of all of this is programming and looping and other studio trickery. The result is a swirling, intoxicating mixture of styles from around the world. There's hip-hop, reggae, dub, countless forms of electronica, something that vaguely resembles a rock/blues hybrid... you name it. Asmar has blended it all together so that, while no shifts seem to come out of nowhere, the album is full of rhythmic and textural surprises - and the foundation of laid-back beats ensures that the music is compelling enough to keep your body moving. It helps racetothebottom get beneath your skin in a very subtle way; by the time you realize that you can't quite bring yourself to turn the album off, you're hooked. If there is anything disappointing about the album, it's something completely unrelated to the music. The liner notes, in a collage, feature a picture of someone who is ostensibly a suicide bomber, along with a poem written from that point of view. On an album that celebrates the diversity and richness of the music found throughout the world, to the point that Asmar's tastes seem to be genuinely blind to such artificial constructs as race and ethnicity, it's a bit of letdown for him to have included something that runs counter to the spirit of global harmony he otherwise embraces. In any case, whatever beliefs Asmar may hold, he hasn't allowed them to influence his music in any overt way. racetothebottom flows brilliantly around the world. Forget clubs - I could dance to this anywhere. - Splendid |
2XLP/Out Of Print