Album Review: Emancipator - Dusk To Dawn

Dusk To Dawn is a collection of world music floating over an electronica heartbeat. It's full of down-tempo instrumental jamming and there's a lot of texture going on. It's not exactly easy listening, but Emancipator (aka Portland, Oregon producer Doug Appling) has buckets of pool-side cool and a host of talented musicians to help you chill.

On the opening track and first single Minor Cause, he layers a slick hip hop beat over the hammered dulcimer, an ancient stringed percussion instrument that Jamie Janover plays in a delicate descending pattern. An unsettling tension hovers in the background as we're introduced to Ilya Goldberg, who conjures a European folk feel with playful and yearning strains of violin.

Emancipator's cultural mash-up is best displayed on The Way. He layers Eastern stringed twangs and echoing Indian-style vocals over a Hollywood Western whistle, the deep rumble of the didgeridoo and live African hand drums. Halfway through, the track is engulfed by a jazz saxophone solo from Dominic Lalli, which gives it an almost definitive soulful character although occasionally, The Way sounds like a handful of cultural stereotypes looped and woven together.

Natural Cause is an ethereal piano piece that sounds like it's straight from a Clint Mansell movie soundtrack and the title track is an uplifting mélange swinging with hints of bluegrass, distant choir vocals and mandolin.

An instrumental album that samples traditional music is not gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but it's a quality recording and if you stepped into an exotic hotel elevator that worked like the wardrobe to Narnia and took you on a ride up through the wilderness to a treetop paradise, Dusk To Dawn would probably be playing inside.