Search - Peter Buffet :: Spirit Dance

Keyboardist Peter Buffett, son of famed investor Warren Buffett, distant cousin of Parrothead Jimmy Buffett, also has ties--strictly creative--to Mike Oldfield and other leading lights of the pre-techno school of progressive electronic music. This was apparent in his sterling 1987 debut, The Waiting, where Buffett extracts huge murals of color from his Synclavier by mixing ambience with mild aggression, then glazing it all with a thin patina of melancholy. Alas, no subsequent recording quite matched the original's cohesiveness--until this evolving project arrived 10 years later. Spirit Dance, which later spawned a stage production and live recording (Spirit), is Buffett's most persuasive treatment of a favorite theme: the survival of an honorable Native American spirit within a progress-at-any-cost culture. Contributors range from Chief Hawk Pope of the Ohio Shawnee (whose musical influence can be found on the Pocahontas soundtrack) to flautist Douglas Spotted Eagle to a German choir to inventive drummer Dan Chase, who earns co-songwriter credits on two of the disc's best moments--the groove-guided "An Eagle Above" and the title track, which cries out for a dance remix. Imaginative rhythms, atmospheric choral passages, judiciously positioned Native chant and drumming, articulate guitar work (from three guitarists) and splendid sound design from Buffett yields a hip, subdued, very appealing journey that concludes with its lone vocal track, a lovely, Tori Amos-like lament for the present. Worthwhile listening. --Terry Wood