EmancipatorDusk 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.
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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.
