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Biography
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Roots World, Biography >>
One of the good things about Jean-Pierre "Smadj"
Smadja is that he's not merely a guy who knows
how to manipulate knobs, switches, programs and
samples to create techno music. He's also an
accomplished player of the 'ud. Therefore, he
must know that no matter how much
'gee-ain't-that-trippy' trickery goes into
creating music that sounds ultramodern, it's
going to come out sounding pretty cold if there's
not some traces of a human touch as well. He lost
sight of that fact in making much of Take it and
Drive, but has still managed to create a good
contemporary pastiche of Arabic, African, Indian
and European sounds. The beats are mostly
mid-tempo, grinding and buzzing along with
mechanized drums and instrumental splotches
making way for sampled sounds and attuned guest
appearances by Malian songbird Rokia Traore,
techno-minded tabla whiz Talvin Singh, Ekova
singer Deirdre Dubois and adventurous Indian
vocalist Amit Chatterjee. Songs like the title
track, "He Said" and "Meeting with the Bushmen"
(on which a group of Kalahari Desert denizens
blend in with ancient grace) are just unrelenting
enough to allow enjoyment on both sides of the
traditional/modern equation, and the ud-prominent
tracks ("Sel," "Tristan") build walls of nice
eerie rhythm behind Smadj's peppery plucking. Not
the best album of its kind but not all bad, either.
- Tom Orr 06/25/06
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