Djam Karet - Collaborator


Year of Release: 1994
Label: HC
Catalog Number: HC008
Format: CD
Total Time: 72:33:00

Djam Karet, one of America's leading progressive outfits, asked some friends and contemporary musicians to compose "incom-plete musical fragments" that were then used by Djam Karet as the basic pattern for a new composition.

Together with guest musicians and longtime friends Steve Roach, Kit Watkins (of Happy the Man and Camel fame), Jeff Greinke, Walter Holland, Loren Nerell, Carl Weingarten and Marc Ander-son they produced what could be called an atmospheric, trance-inducing electronic type of album.

Each of the seven "collaborators" sent in their DAT-tape with unique material on top of which Djam Karet added extra textures and sounds so to create this unique Collaborator.

Fully digitally recorded from January to April of 1994, the album not only uses samplers and synths but also an incredible array of unusual instruments. Next to Tibetan glass crucibles, didgeridoo and ocean drum you will also hear baby toys, radio, electronic door alarm and grass from their own lawn (!?) finding their way onto this album. In a way, it's sort of a sequel to their Suspension & Displacement CD which already offered us a unique ambient feel.

Compared to most of releases nowadays Collaborator is cert-ainly not over-produced. In fact. the end result offers enough open spaces for the listener to add his/her own feeling(s). Each track invokes mini-movies in your mind. My personal cinema showed pictures of endless deserts during "The Day After," the survival of the fittest in "Food Chain," 1001 Arabian nights in "Salt Road" and a unique space journey through unknown Marsian landscapes during "The Fearful Void."

Collaborator is by no means a real Djam Karet album. The bottomline of the album has been written by others but the end result has surely the Djam Karet stamp on it. Lovers of ambient finesse will surely have a nice, long journey with this album!


Tracklisting:
Solar Fire (3:16) / Gondwanaland (4:26) / The Anointing Of The Sick (6:53) / The Day After (12:31) / Foreign Lesion (4:10) / The 17th Karmapa (2:57) / Moorings (6:47) / Cliff Spirits (3:57) / Submersion (5:49) / Food Chan (8:14) / Salt Road (6:01) / The Fearful Void (6:38)

Musicians:
Gayle Ellett - guitars, guitar synthesizer, keyboards, samplers
Henry J. Osborne - bass, keyboards, effects, stick
Mike Henderson - guitar, keyboards, drum, vocal effects

Guests:

Marc Anderson - sampler, berimbau, percussion
Jeff Greinke - keyboards, voices, processing
Walter Holland - synthesizers
Loren Nerell - synthesizers
Steve Roach - matrix 12, sampler & processing, didgeridoo
Kit Watkins - flute, sampler, synthesizer
Carl Weingarten - dobro, effects

Discography:
No Commercial Potential (1985) (Out-of-print)
Kafka's Breakfast (1987) (Out-of-print)
The Ritual Continues (1989)
Reflections In The Firepool (1989)
Burning The Hard City (1991/2000)
Suspension and Displacement (1991/2000)
Collaborator (1994)
The Devouring (1997)
Still No Commerical Potential (1998)
Live at Orion (1999)
New Dark Age (2001)
Ascension (2001)
#1 (2001) (via band only)
#2 (2001) (via band only)
Afghan: Live At The Knitting Factory (2001) (via band only)
A Night For Baku (2003)
Live At NEARfest 2001 (2004)
No Commercial Potential (expanded) (2004)
Recollection Harvest (2005)

Genre: Other

Origin CA

Added: February 19th 2001
Reviewer: John "Bobo" Bollenberg

Artist website: www.djamkaret.com
Hits: 2254
Language: english

  

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