Orquestra Del Desierto - "Dos"
(Alone Records/The Stone Circle Records)
Orquestra Del Desierto - "Dos"
(Alone Records/The Stone Circle Records)
Uploaded to Aural Innovations: January 2004
Well, I quite liked the first release and while others are hailing this as much better, it did not grab me the same way. Don't get me wrong, this is pretty cool stuff. For those who don't know this is a sort of super group of guys from Goatsnake (Peter Stahl), Hermano (Dandy Brown), Fatso Jestson (Mario Lalli) and friends, but it is basically the baby of Dandy and Peter. The CD opens with the melodic fast paced "Life Without Color" track, with strumming guitar, congas, horns and other instruments. A great song. The CD has more commercial tracks like "Summer", "Above the Big Wide" and "El Diablo un Potrano". "Summer" is a strange pop number. "Above the Big Wide" is very QOTSA influenced in my eyes. "Someday" takes the band out into more psychedelic rock territory. A great song. "Quick to Disappear" is going out into the psychedelic Mexican desert once again but with a more 60's influence. "El Diablo un Patrono" again seems to be too influenced by QOTSA and loses that uniqueness of most of this material. The chorus stuff is a total riff off in style. "What in the World" gets into some country psychedelic blues territory. "Over Here" is a short acoustic song. The CD ends with "Sleeping the Dream", a slow piano ballad which people have compared to Bill Withers. I am not sure. A very short CD (under 35 minutes) and a very diverse mixture of stuff, providing a little of everything.
I think whoever wrote this: "delivers a beautiful collection of songs, "classic songs" reminiscent of old giants such as Neil Young, Cream, Bill Withers, and the sounds spawned from Motown", in the promo material must be on a different planet and they were not listening to this record that is for sure!
For more information you can visit The Stone Circle web site at: http://www.the-stone-circle.com.
Reviewed by Scott Heller