Sacred System: Nagual Site

Amazon.com
Sacred System is the recording ensemble of sonic heavyweights Bill Laswell, Graham Haynes, Nicky Skopelitis, Bernie Worrell, Jah Wobble, and Bill Buchen. Too trance to be classified as world music and too exotic to be accurately called dance, Nagual Site is the group's mélange of dub, electronica, and African percussion. It's an interesting listen: the percussion of "X-Zibit-i" gradually gets more furious and loses its worldly roots in a sea of drum & bass and synth sounds, "Driftwork" gets a polyrhythmic vocal and bass treatment, and "Aab Yaad Kar Tu" adds an Eastern vocal style to the mix. Unfortunately, the acid jazz that creeps into smooth jazz on "Derive" is indicative of the whole disc. The styles may cross over, but ultimately the sum total of the parts isn't that interesting. --Jason Verlinde

Tracks:

Raag Sohni
Black Lotus
X-Zibit-i
Derive
Saiya Nikasegaye
Driftwork
Aab Yaad Kar Tu

Amazon.com

Sacred System is the recording ensemble of sonic heavyweights Bill Laswell, Graham Haynes, Nicky Skopelitis, Bernie Worrell, Jah Wobble, and Bill Buchen. Too trance to be classified as world music and too exotic to be accurately called dance, Nagual Site is the group's mélange of dub, electronica, and African percussion. It's an interesting listen: the percussion of "X-Zibit-i" gradually gets more furious and loses its worldly roots in a sea of drum & bass and synth sounds, "Driftwork" gets a polyrhythmic vocal and bass treatment, and "Aab Yaad Kar Tu" adds an Eastern vocal style to the mix. Unfortunately, the acid jazz that creeps into smooth jazz on "Derive" is indicative of the whole disc. The styles may cross over, but ultimately the sum total of the parts isn't that interesting. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews:

Everything thatýs good and bad about Post-Modernism.......2003-07-04

Wild eclecticism--good. Undigested wild eclecticism--bad. Access to other cultures--good. Access couched in excessive irony--bad. Evocation of non-Western sacred musics--good. Such evocation wrapped in alien contexts--bad. The title gives it all away: Sacred System. How can the sacred ever be turned into a system? That's at the heart of what's wrong here--a notion that anything can be appropriated by mere evocation.

A noble attempt to cross several genres--jazz, dub, Indian classical, trance, drum `n' bass, "world lounge," dance, and electronica--there's a real question as to whether this disc succeeds in any. To my ears, this is an unassimilated amalgam, with its wildly clashing styles and aesthetics--sometimes on the same piece, sometimes serially, sometimes all at once--making for aural chaos rather than any kind of enjoyable synthesis.

Yet, without the genuine exploratory sensibilities of Bill Laswell, many of us would probably never be exposed to such a wide musical palate. In a sense, you have to hand it to him for bringing together such a wide range of musical elements. That they don't completely gel doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't have been tried.

Yet, again, I do have another real complaint against this record (you can see that I'm really of two minds about it): The talents of such notable players such as Dave Liebman, Byard Lancaster (a very underrecorded musical genius), Graham Haynes, and Hamid Drake are sorely underutilized. One of the reasons I bought this record was for these players. But their talents are swamped by Laswell, Bernie Worrell, and Jah Wobble. Will that satisfy the trance crowd? I hardly think so. One final grouse (you can almost see the stars slipping away): The musicians aren't listed by track, so it's impossible to tell who's playing on what.

Bottom line: some interesting sounds unfortunately just kind of left lying there. 2 and 1/2 stars.

Trance inducing.......2001-08-20

I got this CD per chance. In fact, I don't really appreciate Jazz music, but I really love traditional indian music turned to trance music. As such, two tracks: Aab Yaad Kar Tu, and Saiya Nikasegaye, are really wonderful for trance and meditation. Being a nice mix of traditional, powerful voices, blended with new-age. For these two I give over five stars. In fact after having heard them, I searched (and spends more than a hundred dollars), to get more music like these, but unfortunately failed to find more of it. The remaining of the CD is different, not the kind I like, so all in all I gave it only a 4 stars.

This is it... this is the one..........2000-06-14

Ok...

Disclaimer: Bill Laswell is so far my favorite musician on the Earth. His production: amazing. His fretless bass playing: beautiful and inspiring (I also play fretless bass)

His sensitivity, adventurous spirit, respect for music and musicians, his trance-awareness, all unparalelled in the music I've heard.

And this album is the embodiment of all these qualities. It's incredibly diverse, yet cohesive. It's intense, yet sensitive. It's new-age, yet respectful of tradition. It's beautiful. Pick it up!

Wonderful fusion of traditional Indian music and rhythmicjaz.......2000-06-14

I bought the CD by chance in a Warsaw jazzstore, misled by the title which in my mind suggested something precolumbian. What I heard instead was most amazing. I have simply never heard a better matched fusion between classical Indian music, expressed in very powerful both male and female voices, traditional instruments, but an especially strong rhythmic section (tabla's, etc..), and on the other hand, very convincing rhythmic jazz with keyboards, trumpets etc.. This is neither one or the another, but a new kind of powerful blend, not newagey at all, but nevertheless trance-inducing through its rhythms ... There's also an identifiable African percussion to be heard. I only give it a four, instead of five, because the documentation is very poor, apart from the names of its musicians, you get no background about the project, the musicians etc...

Rock Music:

Rock Music

rock music

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