Eclecticism is a great luxury. When America exited World War II and entered the most comfortable era in its existence, national insecurity largely seemed obsolete-- at least to the privileged few who didn't need to worry about civil or sexual discrepancies. Consequently, anyone who was anyone figured out that real passion was in music, sex, drugs, and crass, florescent wallpaper. Of course, artists, musicians and poets were the first to realize just how open the American landscape had become, but eventually, even your grandparents were growing sideburns and listening to Les Baxter go all Bora Bora. Somehow a "counter culture" embraced the tip of an iceberg of buzzwords that helped define modern America: Diversity, Equality, Understanding.
Eclecticism is more attainable when you don't have to sweat the basic shit. This explains why you don't find many abstract IDM artistes or jazz hipsters in Tibet. It's not that there isn't a wealth of worthy artistic muse in Tibet (or any other land); I imagine life is generally more interesting elsewhere. Perhaps there is little point in celebrating the world's diversity when daily, local life presents more than enough on which one can concentrate. It must have seemed exotic to listen to Asian gongs and Tahitian rhythms filtered through the corniest big band imaginable to our grandparents. It must have seemed really deep to paste throat-singing monks over Moog patterns to our parents. And I suppose it's a nifty thing to hear African drums put to use as undie hip-hop backing tracks today. None of this is inherently bad, and much of it is curiously comforting. Yet, it's also necessarily superficial; all part of the price we pay for having a decent national infrastructure and oceans on both sides.
Chicago's Hu Vibrational is Adam Rudolph (Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef) and celebrated modern jazz drummer Hamid Drake, and Beautiful: Boonghee Music 2 is their second release. Their first, Boonghee Music, was an EP for Prefuse 73 mastermind Scott Herren's Eastern Developments label. Rudolph and Drake perform music on more ethnic percussion than you can shake a rain stick at: kalimba, Cajon, Udu drum, qarqarba, slit drum, gimbre, Dusu'ngoni, talking drum, surdo and even bamboo flutes. Yet, this is no jungle meeting of the new-age crystal shaman priests; rather, it's a neo-easy listening funk party. Where Martin Denny would have lulled you into a Utopian tropical paradise, Hu Vibrational want to chill you out with James Brown beats and trip-hop moves played on instruments otherwise best suited for indigenous ritual ceremonies or tribal war dances. If it didn't all go down so smoothly, I might say it was "wild" and "free."
Beautiful is a low-key exercise in world-music templates applied to hypnotic, almost minimalist groove. The two percussionists perform short etudes using their array of strange sounding devices, constructing contemporary propulsion from ancient skin and blocks of wood. "On the Now (for Big Black)" (no, not that Big Black; it's the alias of Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist Danny Ray) comes on like a tropical slow jam, shakers providing the pulse for the bellowing on-the-one of talking drum (which sounds very much like a tabla). Carlos Niño (aka DJ and producer Ammon Contact) gets credit for producing this album, and he might well have contributed to the no-nonsense, uninterrupted beat play of this track and much of the rest of Beautiful. "Joyful Road" offers a steadily busy trap kit beat from Drake under which Rudolph heads to the South Pacific via mallets and tuned wood yet never strays too far from good, old-fashioned boogaloo funk. Eclectic, indeed.
IDM artist-cum-hip-hop producer Daedelus guests on two tracks, but rather than provide samples off archaic LPs, he plays guitar. "Feet on a Beautiful Planet" uses more talking drum and kalimba (something like an African xylophone) to provide color, as guitar lends the track a Brazilian flair in places. In comparison, "Sunkissed" sounds much more like a "song," as Drake supplies the uptempo funk pulse, and Daedelus' chord progression suggests introspection while still lending a little structure to an otherwise open-ended jam. In fact, it's the freer moments on this album that offer the most lasting impressions: "In the Here" has a steady pulse, but an understated solo performance throughout from Rudolph on talking drum. Its handclaps lend the piece a spontaneous feel, even if its basic outline is efficiency in the extreme. Likewise, "Friends and Gardens (for Don Cherry)" is a small celebration of bell-like sounds, buoyant Island funk and Rudolph's persistent whisper vocal. At its best, Hu Vibrational's concise improvisation is contagiously alluring.
I might have wished master musicians such as Drake and Rudolph would have performed something a little more weighty than the short, beat-driven tracks on Beautiful, but then, the album falls right in line with a legacy of exotica best heard on evenings or afternoons with a glass of wine and suitably sophisticated company. This stuff might ultimately be background music, but it's a been a while since that was synonymous with saying it's bad-- far be it from me to deny its charms. Eclecticism doesn't always work in art (or perhaps in life), but it certainly has its luxurious moments. If you can stand the florescent wallpaper, there's a lot to enjoy.
