Search - Strunz & Farah :: Live

Combustable Medicine! Incandescent, mysterious, fulfilling.

W. B. Abbott | Oakland, CA USA | 06/09/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A friend gave me this disc as a present and it immediately became a favorite. I'm big on intensity and like Dvorak's "Symphony From The New World", The Ramones' "Rocket To Russia" or Bela Fleck and the Flecktones' "Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo", the only logical way to follow this gem is to play it again!

Just give track 1, "Heat of the Sun", a listen and you'll hear the rhythmic intensity of The Gipsy Kings over a lighter, swinging, bass and a constellation of percussion, handclaps and cymbals. After setting the scene, the melody leaps out of the two guitarist's fingers and instruments with confidence and flair. The melody is passed back and forth, solos framed by percussion, the turn-arounds at the end of the verses bubbling with good humor. Music for a barefoot race on the beach between friends, or the sound track for the night you met someone special on the patio under the stars.

Best of all this isn't all one tone, all fast and exuberent. They can turn it down a bit and paint a landscape of minor and major keys. Its not all lazy good natured feel-good, like Otmar Libert for example. Not dumb tunes carried by great playing or technical exercises. And the 'live'-ness couldn't be more apparent. I have no idea what disc the long, negative, review at the top of this page refers to. I haven't heard it.

I can't go note-by-note comparing this disc to their studio efforts, yet, but I hear the playful and slightly relaxed atmosphere of live recording all through this disc. In a live recording you get no chance to fix it, so either you play it safe and dumb-down the hard parts or you really know your stuff and play better, inspired by the audience and lack of a net. Surely track 2, "Chincha", was recorded in a sound-check, there is no audience noise, but its a technical and demanding piece and the clock-work meshed perfectly, from the tight arpegio that starts it to the mounting intensity of the two-guitar figure it closes with. Some great stuff gets played in sound checks. I'm happy with this version of this tune.

It is a shame though that there's no sample of track 6, "Bola", because I think its the strongest, and just bathed in the calm intimacy that the best live recordings capture. The technique used is stunning, the arangement always fresh, the pair of guitars coming back together time and again, in unison or in counterpoint. The blue notes and the quiet orniments on the main melody have an emotional wieght that just loud and fast playing can never convey. The magic of it is how tender three percussionists, a bass player and two guitarists can sound. And yet the timbale and cymbals playing against time at the end would do any Ska band proud. Neat stuff

"

Absolute Magic

Sheep's Pen | St. Petersburg, FL USA | 07/26/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had to see these guys in concert to believe what my ears were hearing. S&F have broken the sound barrier. Now I have seen and heard what a guitar can do with a master driving it."

Virtuoso Guitars

David Falla | Bogotá, Colombia | 12/26/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As you press play your CD player, you hear clapping and an incredible vivid atmosphere, which you understand as soon as you hear the opening chord of "Heat of the Sun". From then onward, you are stoned by all the rhythm that these two virtuosos squeeze out of beautiful, hand-made guitars. You are stoned, all the way. Your mind becomes blind with music. Again you hear an audience raging from excitement, at the end of "Américas", and in this moment you press the repeat button on that CD player."