Michael Blake - Kingdom of Champa?

[John B]

Has anyone here heard this disc? I've been listening to his album Elevated and really enjoying it. I was wondering if Kingdom of Champa was worth tracking down? The AMG review has me intrigued, but I would love to hear some comments from people on the board before buying a copy.

[J.A.W.]

Here's the AMG review (for what it's worth) with sound samples.

CDUniverse also has sound samples.

Edited October 6, 2004 by J.A.W.

[montg]

I have this album--it's very different from Elevated. There are some parts that are kind of 'free' and there's some electric guitar fuzz/distortion in a few places. It's produced by Teo Macero. This isn't usually the type of thing I go for, but I really do like this CD a lot. First, Blake's a great writer and there are some beautiful songs on here (e.g., 'Perfume river' and 'Folksong'). Second, I like how he integrates the Vietnamese/Eastern influences in the instrumentation and some of the melodies--the blend is seamless and it's not awkward or overdone.

One way that this CD is similar to 'Elevated' is that it has kind of a cinematic scope... the soundscapes are very rich and evocative. 'Elevated' evokes images of the Middle East at times for me and "Kingdom" evokes images of Vietnam.

The sound samples from Amazon (I assume they're still there) are pretty representative. As I said, I like this CD a lot and I'd recommend it, especially if you like Blake's writing.

[John B]

Thank you for that reply! Based on your comments and the soundclips this one is a no-brainer. I'll be grabbing a copy of this one soon.

[king ubu]

John, "Drift" is the only Blake disc I have heard, but I really like it:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/pgblake/mblake/drift.html

ubu