BDC - "screamifyouwanttogofaster"

Album review by Danny Alexander

Boris Dedoff Cresta, a musician from Paraguay by way of K-State, is so ambitious his presskit calls him a band, and the music lives up to the promise. Cresta's ambient music takes many different shapes, from the two keyboards--one playing a single chord, one an arpeggio--against simmering percussion on "Googaplex" to the cascading chimes banging up against and snaking through hard beats, throbbing keyboards and synth washes in "Tenzadrine."

Beyond all of the apparent electronic music inspirations, Cresta cites Miles Davis as an influence, and that says a lot about the music. Cresta's music plays with house and industrial beats, but it moves with Davis's emphasis on quiet and restrained pacing. When BDC does shift into high gear, with sounds coming from every direction in unpredictable combinations, the moment is all the more effective because the ear follows the space in the mix as much as the sound itself.

The vocals may be the only real downside to all of this. I understand that they are just another instrument, mattering more for their sound than the words they say. But the voices sound interesting enough to emphasize, rather than leaving them blurred in the mix. It doesn't seem that we would lose any musical poignancy by being able to hear the specifics of the vocals as clearly as the bongos, guitar chords or piano figures that crystallize now and again.

Half of this CD is available for free download at http://www.mp3.com/bdc.

--Danny Alexander
danny@thezone.org