|
|
Ironically, their best world music album to date is their first recording -- "Mosaico" (1981). It features astonishingly complex guitar playing in the context of the globe-trotting backdrop. Something like "Greek Zorba dancing in the Caribbean sunset backed by the Kundalini-like wiggling of the Indian violin". Actually, the star that outshines our spectacular guitarists is a phenomenal Indian violinist L. Subramaniam. His solo on "The Shadow Of Heaven" pushes the capabilities of the violin to its extreme limits, while at the same time conveying the mysterious feeling of the spiritual initiation.
Both Strunz's and Farrah's guitar playing
is intricate to the point of being blurry. However, take the preceding
statement in its most positive light -- it's this blurry quality that communicates
the abundance and the felicity of the sub-tropical climate. The arabesques
that they weave throughout this recording are mind-boggling; they tend
to be so complex that it almost defies any analysis. In one of their earlier
interviews they reminisced how brutal it was to record "Mosaico". In all
truthfulness, you can't find many recordings where guitar playing has been
pushed to such extreme limits as it was on this album. Still, this is not
strictly for the guitar aficionados, as it contains some breathtakingly
beautiful music.