Search - Banyan :: Banyan

Your dark side

Stargrazer | deep in the heart of Michigan | 11/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Where "Anytime At All" slips into the easy glove of pop-funk-fusion, this debut album is it's darker distant cousin. There's hints of "Dark Magus"-style heaviness, Stravinsky's primal iconoclasm, and a freewheeling improvisatory edge that lets you know right from the start that unexpected sounds and changes will continue to assert themselves.



Where "Anytime At All's" rotating cast ultimately left an aftertaste of Chili Peppers-style jam rock, "Banyan's" steady fourpiece of Watt, Money Mark, Nels Cline and Stephen Perkins provides a far more lasting and wierder listen, dripping with psychic residue.



Watt's ever inventive basslines fuel songs like the standout, "Christmas Tree Park," while Cline's astonishing wiry guitar lines transect and dodge all the little textural bits and samples conjured by Money Mark, Perkins, and production team The Dust Brothers.



The recording of this album is in itself singular: each musician recorded in semi-isolation, wearing headphones that funneled Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" or other challenging music into their ears. The results were then assembled by the Dust Brothers and David Turin into a record that listens best as a whole, rather than as individual movements.



"Banyan" is an assemblage chock full of left turns, and a testimony to the continuing art of improvisation."