Search - Gnawa Diffusion :: Dz Live

Strange editing; strange inclusion choices

WaltSnipe | Austin, Tx United States | 01/31/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This group's studio album, "Algeria", is one of the best things I've bought in the last year....full of wildly imaginative combinations of North African styles and reggae. This live album, though, is odd on several fronts. Firstly, it comes as a 2-CD set, but there isn't close to a full CD worth of music on each CD....it could have been put on one CD. Secondly, there are recordings of an intro and outro drum procession to and from the stage that was probably great to see, but is poorly recorded. This wouldn't be such a big deal if there were more actual songs on the CD (and if the outro procession didn't just inexplicably edit to silence in the middle of it), but there just isn't that much here. It sounds like it was a great concert, but you don't really get the feel for it because of the sparcity of live material offered, not to mention that the last song on disc 1 and the first song on disc 2 aren't live at all! Very weird assembly for this project, and a real waste of an opporunity to give people who will never get to see these guys live some kind of experience of their live shows."