Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

CARAVANA is the brainchild of Joao Pedro Veloso Rodrigues; he combines snippets of vocal and instrumental middle eastern and African traditional music tracks with western samples, basslines, and beats to exotic effect. The CD booklet contains an artist's rendition of Rodrigues sitting at a console, surrounded by assorted and sundry recording equipment, a monitor, and exotic musicians doing their thing. It is as good an artistic rendition as any of what is going on here. There is a lot of this going on; I literally just got off of the phone with a musician from New Orleans who described a similar project which he is involved with and which consists of West African folk music recorded by a native tribe, brought back to the united States, and augmented by jazz musicians. Technology is making the music world incredibly small, and CARAVANA is an example of this. Rodrigues is also assisted on a couple of tracks by, among others, Moussa AG Keyna on vocals, and by Glaucus Lynx on sax. The result is kind of a world music meets Alan Parsons Project, with programmer as producer.

The music here is unapologetically dance-oriented; think The Casbah meets drum 'n' bass. Rodrigues is smart enough and talented enough to mix things up between and among tracks to keep things from becoming monotonous and/or boring (though he comes close on "Batuquente"). "Trip Indiano" may be the most interesting track on the disc, combining tape loops, hiphop scratching, and sampled vocals to hypnotic effect. CARAVANA echoes MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, the Brain Eno/ David Byrne project of the early 1980s, but takes a few more steps through the door that work opened. So far as I know this is Rodrigues' first and only work --- my netsurfing abilities, alas, are on par with your average eight-year old ---  But hopefully enough people will clue into what he is doing to inspire him to release more. Listen, and feel your brain cells opening.