Search - Azam Ali :: Elysium for the Brave

Elysium for the Brave
Azam Ali
Elysium for the Brave
Genres: International Music, Jazz, New Age, Pop
 
  •  Track Listings (9) - Disc #1

"Elysium For The Brave", Azam's second solo album, signals a new turn in her musical evolution. The album, her most ambitious work to date, brings together musicians from varied musical backgrounds performing in diverse p...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Azam Ali
Title: Elysium for the Brave
Members Wishing: 1
Total Copies: 0
Label: Six Degrees
Original Release Date: 1/1/2006
Re-Release Date: 7/25/2006
Genres: International Music, Jazz, New Age, Pop
Styles: Middle East, Meditation
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 657036113022

Synopsis

Album Description
"Elysium For The Brave", Azam's second solo album, signals a new turn in her musical evolution. The album, her most ambitious work to date, brings together musicians from varied musical backgrounds performing in diverse permutations. The result is a highly coherent body of work that seamlessly weaves together all of Azam's cultural and musical influences into a haunting tapestry of atmospheric rock, electronic, and global sounds. Singing predominantly in English for the first time, the songs are based on lyrics written by Azam herself and reveal a poetic lyricism heard only in glimpses in her previous work.

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CD Reviews

An erotic and mystical muse
Craig L. Gidney | Washington, DC USA | 07/29/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Azam Ali, "Elysium for the Brave."



Azam Ali, vocalist of Vas and Niyaz, has always been a closet goth. Her wordless vocals tended toward the minor key. In her first English language album, she brings out the black nail polish with her dark, contemplative lyrics about war and unrequited love. The music she and her cohorts construct are dark ambient techno pieces liberally accented with the Persian and Indian music that she developed in both her other projects. Danceable rhythms sinuously percolate, while exotic instruments play against a tapestry of delayed guitar effects and swirling keyboards. The sorrowful chord progressions wouldn't sound out of place on a Siouxsie or Robert Smith album, and the compositions - courtesy of such collaborators as Axiom of Choice's Loga Ramin Terkian and Niyaz's Carmen Rizzo - meld traditional and electronic instrumentation seamlessly. The ace in the hole, of course, is Ali's beautiful, rich voice. She turns English into alien language, twisting vowels into odd and magical shapes. In the past, she's sounded like Lisa Gerrard here, or Sheila Chandra there. On this album, Ali sounds like herself. Erotic, mysterious and melancholy, it's not too early to call this the ethereal album of the year.

"
Enveloping beauty of an album
Serge | North Brunswick, NJ USA | 08/01/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Azam doesn't take long to make a definitive statement on this album - the very first track is a beauty, a darkly shimmering, goosebump-inducing song featuring her signature vocals over a mixture of ethnic percussion and synthesizers (incidentally, this track also features King Crimson's Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto). Whereas the formula of mixing electronics with world music influences has gone so wrong in so many hands, here it shines, showing that it's an approach that only works when the influences are mixed naturally, not forced into an uncomfortable or superficial coexistance. Azam seems to have developed her own place in this genre-crossing terrain, rather than producing derivative work.



The album continues from there, showing the familiar facets of Azam from Vas and Niyaz, further maturing and evolving. "In Other Worlds" is another highlight, with a tasteful touch of trip-hop underlying the vocals. Indeed, this is indicative of the whole album - a certain element of minimalism allows the songs to breathe instead of burying them with unnecessary distractions. That said, there is quite a lot happening beneath the surface (as a quick glance at the list of contributing musicians would suggest), never boring the attentive listener. A work of beauty that demands more than just a single listening."
Musical Elysium
Crazy Fox | Chicago, IL USA | 08/20/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Well, Azam Ali's voice is every bit as rich and beautiful as the first time I heard it, on "Sunyata" when she was with Vas, but her music has become much more multilayered, complex, and satisfying. She reveals strong songwriting talent here in "Elysium for the Brave" with haunting, sophisticated lyrics of inner conflict and struggle--informed with a passionate (yet ambiguous) spark of transcendence alloyed with a refined sensuality. This was new, at least to me. Then, and a real strong point for me as far as this album goes, she integrates the sounds of contemporary electronica with the musical idioms of several different cultural traditions here in successfully subtle and compelling ways--never sounding fake or tacked on. Best of all, the vocals and the instrumentals, fine in and of themselves, function well in tandem, neither overshadowing the other and neither going off on its own tangent. I wasn't sure if I'd really like this CD or not, but it turned out to be a fine album that grows on you with each listening."