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Sample Track 1:
"Want Not (featuring Tamar-kali)" from Ticklah Vs. Axelrod
Sample Track 2:
"Mi Sonsito (featuring Mayra Vega)" from Ticklah vs. Axelrod
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CD Review

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New Jersey Star Ledger, CD Review >>

NEW-MODEL REGGAE "Ticklah vs. Axelrod" Ticklah (Easy Stars) 

The Brooklyn-based Easy Stars label brought us two of the coolest reggae albums in years — "Dub Side of the Moon" and "Radiodread," improbably marvelous song-by-song re-creations of Pink Floyd and Radiohead discs. Keyboardist/producer Victor Axelrod, a k a Ticklah, was part of the Easy Stars All-Stars crew that created those albums (not to mention the session group for Amy Winehouse's "Rehab"). With "Ticklah vs. Axelrod" — the title alluding to a competitive tradition in Jamaican music and the creative tussles in his own head — this ingenious studio mole has fashioned a disc of equally sensuous allure, as deeply rhythmic as classic reggae but sonically modern and melodically involving, too.     

There are great dub-style instrumentals here, with "Two Face," "Scratch to Win" and "Nine Years" among them — all coolly tinkling keyboards, slow-rolling horns and a bottomless rhythm section, subjected to sonic manipulation like an aural carnival ride. The vocal tracks are even better, headed by "Want Not," featuring singer Tamar-kali of the Easy Stars All-Stars; her warm, soulful tones make a Zen meditation against desire sound like the sexiest thing ever. Even a song about the Rastafarian distaste for the other white meat — "Pork Eater," with vocals by grinning reggae man Rob Symenonn ("Some of them are pork eater/Piggy wiggy/Them eat of the swine/Don't know what's on their mind") — is impossibly catchy.     

A man of the world, rhythmically speaking, Ticklah twists the dials on the salsa beat, too, lending a loping, hallucinatory vibe to "Mi Sonsito" and "Si Hecho Palante" — two tunes from Eddie Palmieri's songbook, featuring wonderful singing by Mayra Vega. As smart as it is endlessly groovy, "Ticklah vs. Axelrod" is one of the year's most addictive albums in any genre.

-- Bradley Bambarger  10/15/07
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