Word: wah
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...loved James' smashhit, MTV-darling, coming-soon-to-an-amusement-park-near-you album, Laid. So you loved those catchy radio tunes, "Laid" and "Say Something." The question is, will you love James' new, funky, very impressionistic, very long album, Wah Wah...
...Wah Wah is Laid's dark side. The snooty liner notes tell us that Wah Wah was actually produced concurrently with Laid, reflecting the experimental jams which spawned the more structured Laid songs. According to producer Brian Eno in the aforementioned notes, the tracks on Wah Wah "took shape out of bewildering deserts of confusions, consolidated, lived gloriously for a few minutes and then crumbled away...
Luckily, the music on Wah Wah does not take itself as seriously as Eno apparently does. The 23 tracks reflect two general moods: one, a dreamy, new-age rain-foresty wash of sound over which an cerie voice intones barely audible lyrics; the other, an abrasive, Achtung-Baby industrialesque sound with distorted, staticky vocals...
...times on Wah Wah, the songs achieve coherence despite the best efforts of the band, and the result is hauntingly intense. The second track, "Pressure's On," is one such song: the weirdly hypnotic synthesizer, the surreal, breathy vocals and the only occasionally comprehensible lyrics combine to create a liquid, seductive, trippy sound. A later track, the aptly titled "Rhythmic Dreams," has a similar effect, but relies on a steady jungly drumbeat and mantra-like vocals to give the piece shape and draw in the listener. These and other tracks utilize non-musical noises, like dripping water, crickets, and talking...
...brilliant Stolen Moments is an openly contentious album. Most of the songs deal with aids, and each of the tunes pairs rappers with jazz performers -- rapper Guru with Donald Byrd, the spoken-word group the Last Poets with saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Digable Planets with guitarist Wah Wah Watson and trumpeter Lester Bowie. Age is coupled with youth, cool with anger, and the result is music with a caustic beauty...