Sasha loves disc! I should have it memorized by now!
author: Amanda Koulinkovitch
I thought you'd like to hear the review of your CD given by Sasha the two year old. He was very impressed with the baby on the cover and on the CD itself. He jumped right up to put the disc in the player. He was mystified with the first 20 seconds of the first track. We listened to it approximately 50 times before we heard anything else on the album. Track two was not well received. It was interrupted by a huge corn poop. His favorite song was the one with the rap in it (no big surprise, little hip hop addict). I should have that song memorized by now. He repeated it a zillion times.
Although the review session was frequently interrupted with Lego tower collapses, the most enormous BM I've seen in weeks and one truck drawn on the kitchen floor in florescent marker, I'd say your music was well received. Even by a toddler who prefers his apple cinnamon oatmeal be served with ketchup.
I hope you enjoyed reading your review as much as I enjoyed living through it.
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straight-ahead world music, without any gimmicks
author: J. Eric Smith
The eponymous debut disc from 50 Man Machine offers one of the most diverse, if not perverse, instrumental attacks ever captured in a recording studio, as steel pans, turntables, bagpipes, double bass, experimental sound collages, mandolin, clarinets and even an udu or two slug it out for sonic space. In less able hands, such an eclectic mixture of textures could lead to an auditory train wreck-but under 50 Man mastermind L. Collier Hyams' able direction, the results are strikingly effective, never smacking of instrumental gimmickry or musical oddness for musical oddness' sake. Hyams' songs are, for the most part, strong and straightforward, and his guitar and vocal work underpin the whole project with a twang-flavored Americana feel, one that provides ample room for the army of other instruments and players to find, explore and exploit their own acoustic niches. Tracks featuring Scott Smallwood's steel pans and Neil Anderson's pipes generally evoke the Caribbean or Celtic flavors or those instruments' homelands (although this is as much a function of pre-conditioned listening reflex as it is a function of the songs themselves), while the remainder of 50 Man Machine taps an indescribable vein of musical internationalism without the lowest common denominator reductiveness that renders so many so-called "world music" discs so completely disposable. All told, this is a challenging and rewarding record from artists who seem willing not only to color outside the lines, but to toss the whole damn coloring book out the window, drawing instead in burnt umbers and sienas and taupes and heliotropes and fuchsias on the walls of places normally decorated in simple primaries and pastels. Worth a peek, for sure.
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