Milica Paranosic - "Give to Grow"
(Electroshock Records 2010, ELCD 058)
Milica Paranosic - "Give to Grow"
(Electroshock Records 2010, ELCD 058)
From Aural Innovations #42 (May 2011)
Milica Paranosic is a composer and performance artist born in Belgrade but now living in New York City. Give to Grow is her first album for the Electroshock label. The CD is described as a multicultural musical exchange between the composer and school age children studying music in Kopeyia, Ghana, and I see that her web site (milicaparanosic.com) goes into detail about her teaching experiences there.
The CD is relatively short, clocking in at just about 30 minutes, and includes 8 tracks. The set starts off with a couple vocal dominated tracks, sung, I believe, in the Serbian language. Things get a little more interesting on Venus Song, which features choir vocals and spoken poetry in English, accompanied by harp. Bojano is similar with voices and piano. But it gets even more interesting with I Am a Bird, which consists of Latin influenced acoustic guitar, orchestration, and swirling alien electronics, plus another poem from Roger Bonair-Agard, who also recited on Venus Song. Lulla features flute and moody but meditative orchestration and voices. The voices have a chirping quality, but then transitions to a fluttering avant-African style. Very interesting. But my favorite track of the set is Duet, with its African percussion, jazz percussion, flute, and Latin acoustic guitar, which together make for an oddly compelling combination. Some quite interesting ideas on this CD and I feel like it ended just as Paranosic was starting to get a momentum going.
For more information you can visit the Electroshock Records web site at: http://www.electroshock.ru
Reviewed by Spaceman33