Waterbone
Tibet (World Disc)
by Scott Hefflon
I have a confession to make: I like Tangerine Dream and the Enya CD that acted as soundtrack to Steve Martin’s L.A. Story (Watermark, I think it was). Waterbone drift with a similar exotic-meets-cheesy-synth motion as TD, bringing the tinkle of jingle bells, Gregorian chants, lush choirs, and all sorts of instruments sounding vaguely Indiana Jonesian to a very dancy form complete with extremely inorganic keyboard sounds. Olive-skinned women yodeling (wailing, howling, praying, whatever the hell they’re doing), men robustly offering choral back-up, sounds skitting in and out of consciousness, all layered over a full percussion package not unlike New Order or early Pet Shop Boys – sound intriguing? Well, it certainly is. Every cliché in the dog-eared book of New Age/pseudo-spiritual/exotica-cum-electronica is represented here. Even those wind chimes I have yet to ever find outside of albums such as this. Ditto with the breathing organs. I have no idea if, in its proper
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