light shining in the distance
| Format | CD |
| Country | USA |
| Recorded | 1999 |
| Issued | 1999 |
| Label | Zemira Records |
| Cat no. | |
| Playing time | 73:52 |
| Reviewer | Simen Viig Østensen |
| VINE SWEETLAND light shining in the distance |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
Forty instruments from five continents, two dozen musicians, one poet and one 74 minute track. If your musical horizon lacks the horizon it is perhaps time to expand it here and now, because this is definitely not music for airports or house parties.
Vine Sweetland is not an aged cabernet, but one of the most recognized names in California within the genre known as "The Spoken Word", or in other words, poetry presented on a carpet of musical support, or simply on the street, so called "street poetry". Should you be in doubt as to what this is, then perhaps names like Timothy Leary and not least Gilly Smyth with Mother Gong can help you put Vine Sweetland on the map, although we must not forget The Forefathers of the New Millennium either, which I suppose is the considerable number of musicians who appear on this CD.
With him is Dr. John Beresford who supposedly goes by the name of "the man who turned on Timothy Leary" along with Rahul Sakyaputra, a world reknown sitar player who has studied with Baba Alla Uddin Khan, the greatest Indian musician in our time, according to the press release.
The instrumentation is too comprehensive to list in this issue of Tarkus, but if I include all known istruments on the planet and deduct a few, we come pretty close. The musicians appear to be a mix of American and Indian, with a Japanese name on the list.
According to the press release from Zemira (The Garden of Multifarious Art Production Companies), and the lady with the melodious name of Amy Antoinette, Vine Sweetland & The Forefathers of the New Millennium have produced advertisment films for Honda, Taco Bell and Sony, and they have recently performed at the Dalai Lama World Festival Of Sacred Music in Los Angeles. Of course, you have deducted by now that the company resides in the USA, in Long Beach, California (Zemira, at least).
Southern California is a melting pot for a variety of musical styles. Progressive rock and related directions have a strong foothold here. Vine Sweetland and the band is strictly based more within the psychedelic direction where "the spoken word", i.e. the poetry performed by Vine Sweetland, is central, while the music partly lies behind, and partly functions as scenery between the texts, more perhaps like small detached musical pieces always altering character, but generally are psychedelic or quasi-psychedelic (according to the CD booklet).
To many, this may appear a little dire, especially if poetry is not your cup of tea, but just listen to the text which goes like this:
"A dying guru inspires a young caterpillar with his final vision of lifes ambition. Crawling from the window sill out into the jungles of tribulation she pursues wisdom and understanding. The trials of her existence offer friendship and folly, heartache and horror, as she acknowledges her destiny; that she has become the last butterfly born."
This is certainly poetry worth listening to. Did I say that the music mathes the concept perfectly? Oh yes, even without being a poetry fanatic, you will have a lot of good music in measured amounts from this record, and maybe you will listen to the stories as well?
Possibly not for everyone, but for those of you who contain that little extra horizon, or for those of you who wish to expand it.
Light Shining In the Distance: Opera Entheogen (which I am uncertain what means) can be obtained on CD and in book form.
© 2001 Tarkus Magazine