REVIEW: Fly.co.uk
What is in between? Between the varied, driving beats, and inventive instrumentality of David Lowe’s second Dreamcatcher album? Voices. And strong, varied ones at that.
The most standout of these is Benjamin Zephaniah, who contributes to four tracks. I have followed him closely ever since seeing him perform at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 1996, through his subsequent collaborations with Kinobe, Sinead O’Connor and The Mad Professor, and his own album Naked. As a performance poet, he is in a class of his own, taking poetry to an ever increasing audience. This is no more evident on What..is in Between? than on ‘Sadhu’, where his entrancing, rhythmic voice, melancholy and amused in one breath, infuses the beats. He pulls off a similar trick on the more sombre ‘Blazing Sun’.
Japanese artist and composer Mieko Shimizu appears on all but one track and sings flawlessly in a variety of languages, and it is her voice that underpins so much of this album, which draws in a panoply of influences. Her voice is one of the threads that holds What… is in Between? together.
David Lowe is about as lucky in his job as it is possible to be. As his commissions are so varied he gets to indulge his interests in global beats regularly. At present, he is working on music with a Cuban/Afro-Caribbean feel, working with Cuban and Ghanian musicians for a programme for BBC Bristol. He lets loose on his Dreamcatcher work, and although for some he is best known for his TV themes, (the themes for the BBC News programmes for example) and the 2004 soundscape for the Eden Project, which was played at WOMAD 2005, his latest Dreamcatcher album is one everyone should catch.
Wyl Menmuir
Fly.co.uk, Friday 8 September 2006
See www.fly.co.uk/fly/archives/europe_reviews/david_lowes_dreamcatcher_what.html
