Three CD Reviews- Serart, Jen Elliot And Domestic Godzilla

After meeting at the Armenian Music Awards and Tankain collaborated on a short album ender for Toxocity. Boyaciyan, a Grammy nominated percussionist and permanent member of the Paul Winter Earth Band. Born in Istanbul, he and his brother Onno became musicians. After moving to the US to look for greener musical pastures, Arto began playing with an array of jazz and world music artists, including Don Cherry, Oregon, Paul Winter & The Earth Band Al DiMeola.and Night Ark. His debut solo effort Every Day Is A New Life was released in 2000.

The Serart audio CD in the set features a mixture of Armenian and Arabic flavored musical set pieces with vocals in undetermined language, probably Armenian. The instrumentation can best be described as a combination of tribal beats, ethnic percussion and mature (not twiddly or New Age) electronica.

The short Intro has a nursery rhyme feel to it, and sets the tone for the rest of the pieces. Relaxed without becoming whimsical. Cinema combines tribal drumbeats and jazzy horns wed to a whirling dervish rhythm. Some of the piece is vaguely reminiscent of English band Pop Will Eat Itself.

Devil's Wedding is a tableau of electronic swirls Arabic folk music/wrapped up in a neat little formula that makes it palatable to the less sophisticated crowd. Walking Experiment is more dreamy & discordant. The music is interrupted by bursts of vocal and percussion, these quick shouts as though the vocalist woke up to ponder a nightmare. Claustrophobia is the aural equivalent of the title, with scraggly, paranoid spoken word layered over the track. Narina, with haunting vocals by Jenna Ross, has an ethereal quality

The accompanying DVD is titled Sun Angle Calculator. Directed by Matthew Amato, this 14-minute experimental film that echoes Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren and plethora of short experimental films. Containing images of African tribal drumming, Einstein, bathers in the Ganges, it is deftly edited and swings of clip to clip of songs on Serart.

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