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CD Review
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XLR8R, CD Review >>
Gigi: Illuminated Audio
Mamani Keita & Marc Minelli: Electro Bamako
Megacultural supa-label Palm Pictures places the vocals of two African-American female singers in the hands of a couple of expert Western producers, to mixed results. Illuminated Audio finds Bill Laswell reconfiguring Ethiopian singer Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw's eponymous '01 debut in the ambient-dub style he's applied to Miles, Marley and Santana. For the most part , he sweeps Gigi's voice into the epic, atmospheric whoosh and thump of his aesthetic, making it as much a Laswell album as anything else. Meanwhile, British producer Marc Minelli offers the jaunty, yearning Malian vocals of former Salif Keita backing singer Mamani Keita a far more structured and urbane context that leaps between reggae, urban jazz and cafe soundtrack. By avoiding Laswell's kind of voracious take-over appropriation, Minelli generates the kind of vital product that doesn't float off into ethno-mystical outter space. Ron Nachmann 06/01/03
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