Album Notes

LAND OF THE BLIND is a tribe from Portland, OR, then moved to San Francisco...Blind's a band that creates new music defying category led by lead vocalist, writer-producer Cyoakha Grace. "Tribal-Trance" is one label but this music is nothing like most CDs labeled "Trance" that are electronic disco-ish beats with touches of World and without true songs, basically cold dance music. This music is warm, inviting, sexy even and full of delightful songs. Blind's trance is closer to a Dead Can Dance, but Cyoakha actually writes and sings songs, real songs in English, not just vocal toning, like what's popular in the World-Trance-New Age dance scene. These are songs you can sing along to, and in that way, they are closer to Folk or Pop, but with the band's ethnic instruments, they certainly don't sound like another guitar-strumming group! A true catogory might be: WORLD-DREAM-POP-TRANCE-FOLK-AMBIENT-MIDDLE EASTERN-CELTIC-NATIVE-DRUID-DANCE-MAGIC Also check out Blind's award winning second album, "Out of Chaos (Into the Whirlwind), at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cyocyo2 First thing you hear is Cyoakha's outstanding vocals, "like honey poured over the music", deep trance style, sometimes incredibly intense, moving. "Soaring and sub-orbital" says one reviewer, which links her to mentor Kate Bush, but very different also, with the low strong tribal feels. Vocally she's able to move from haunting shivery pure clarity to full out diva-kicking. Like Kate, she can purr to howl, but there's a touch of Sheila Chandra-like Mid-East/Indian feels without ever losing the western edge and sliding into pure World music. Names critics have dropped are Kate Bush-Tori Amos-Laurie Anderson-Souxie of the Banchees and Grace Slick...wild range! Cyoakha and her bandmates insist on new trails musical also. The entire band supports her slightest movement with excellent percussion, "buttloads of hand percussion" says SF Weekly and lead bass lines from Regina (M99s) LaRocca that move song by song from Medieval lead lines to post-punk driving, plus there is sweet dreamy flute, incredible didgeridoo, Indian harmonium & ambient keys. It's the mix of styles and feels that helps to get the listener lost in the music, no familiar ground, yet you are part of it, and, it all works together, true trance-fusion. ORDINARY MAGIC is a journey, so hold on to your trance pants. It starts with the Burning Man theme song... TRACK ONE TRIBE, a very cool dark Native groove with Cyoakha's impassioned call for communal involvement while behind her Regina chants an anti-consumer rant. This song could be the theme song of the WTO Seattle protests, but yes, you can dance to it and it is uplifting! TRACK 2 CHURCH OF THE HOLY TREES, a dreamy middle-eastern trance-dance ectopolitical song Cyoakha wrote for Julia Butterfly when she first moved into "Luna", the ancient Redwood she saved. CHURCH is featured in the award-winning documentary called "TREESIT". TRACK 3 TRUST You'll still be up dancing for this one, a wonderful Celtic dreamy romp with fantastic vocals, Cocteau Twins-type harmonies, about loving. With the sliding vocals flowing and amazing guest violinists wailing, you should listen to this one on headphones for a real treat!!! TRACK 4 MARY'S HANDS The album slows down and drops into dreamy and adds an ambient yet Middle-Eastern feel in this sweet mysterious ballad. Jesus and Mary anyone? DiVinci Code cracking song... TRACK 5 MOTHER, is a very beautiful Celtic piece, almost traditional but you don't hear a didg often in Irish tunes!! Great flute in this one, you can almost see the piper up on the hill overlooking some little Irish town. TRACK 6 ELIZA is a fun pop song, light, with a great Native American flute lifting it while the driving bass powers the chorus almost into Nivana-ish grunge-land. FUN! TRACK 7 A LITTLE MORE, has this mad trash can feel to it, it's electronica but as if Tom Waitish was in charge of the techno, yet the cou