Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Bobo Bazinsky in the Bronx will scare you in the same way that a big city scares an out-of-towner.  It’s loud, hectic, in-your-face, and diverse.  But behind the beeps and traffic is a silver lining of humanity and culture.  All of this, believe it or not, is actually captured by 35 Days in May.  Some listeners will undoubtedly brush the album aside as a mere experiment of sounds and instruments.  But give the eight-track album a chance.  It’s hypnotic and endearingly scary.

The first track, Out of Blue, starts off extremely loud and discordant.  Saxophones, bass, and percussion come together in a frenzied storm.  No lyrics, just pure eclectism.  It will remind of you a neighborhood like Washington Heights or West Harlem in New York.  At other times it feels like Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California.  Is it music, or is it just sounds put together for four minutes?  Well, I’ll let you decide.  I thought it was truly original, and although I’m not jumping at the bait to listen to it again, it made me think.

20 Blind 20 didn’t have the same effect.  This song is definitely more of a song; it has a pulsating progression beat to the percussion.  But it never really goes anywhere.  It sounded like background music to Zelda or some anime action sequence.  There are weird warbles from a synthesizer that makes it have a science fiction feel, but it never breaks out.  Luckily, it is only three minutes long.

Bobo Bazinsky in the Bronx, the title track, is nice and a little more conventional than the first two tomes.  It’s keyboards are nice, but more importantly, the saxophone work of Paul Carr is tremendous and steady.  It still has some of those weird warblings from electronic equipment, but, for the most part, it’s a pretty solid song.  I enjoyed the constant starting and stopping of the beats.  Though I’m not sure if I get a clear picture of what type of neighborhood is being instrumentally brought to life.  It doesn’t feel like the Bronx, as the title suggests.  Maybe, a milk bar lounge a la “A Clockwork Orange.”

There is No Greater Love sounds like a pianist in a mall’s central lobby could play it.  It has a very standard feel to it.  But, at the same time, there are some crazy percussion taps in the background that bring the song to life.  Jeff Kaye, who is the master behind 35 Days in May, has a great way of making a typical instrumental sound as if it’s falling through a rabbit hole, like Alice in Wonderland.  The end of the song is one of the best parts on the album.

Country Wizard has a nice jazz feel to it.  Jim Kiser’s trumpet sounds especially nice.  There are these weird noises in the background that sound like a tesla coil turned up to maximum electrocution.  I can’t say whether I liked it or not, because it seemed to fit, and it also seemed not to fit.  This is the type of album where you just sit back and go through the moods; don’t question whether it all fits.

The one thing I know I didn’t like about Country Wizard was the 'wickie-wickie' of a record being scratched D.J.-style.  It really took me out of the element.

The In Crowd was nice, and reminded me of the opening theme song to “The Sopranos.”  The song is interrupted with some strange, crazed vocals that are unintelligble.  I actually enjoyed them, because it gave the song a city-like feel of people at crosswalks and taxis clamoring by.  The song has a real “move” to it.

The liner notes state that the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, inspired The Big Smoke.  The symbolism was lost on me.  At times the percussion had that stabbing feel to it, similar to a boxing match, but I couldn’t see the parallel.

It Ain’t Necessarily So closes out the album, and in its eight-minute glory, it sums up everything you need to know about Jeff Kaye and 35 Days in May.  Some of the best piano work on the album is featured here.  Some faint vocals are added to a nice effect.  The best is how abrupt the ending comes, also similar to “The Sopranos.”  It just stops.  The city has gone to sleep.