Among the welter of recent CD's by Alaska musicians, two stand out before you even remove the cellophane for one salient reason: Their production was paid for by someone other than the artist.
"Tomegan Gospem," the second album by Anchorage band Medicine Dream to be released on Canyon Records, is a notable improvement on the first, "Mawio'mi" -- not so much because it advances the earlier style but rather because of how it perfects the marriage of pop and Native American influences.
In "Tomegan Gospem" -- the album title is the Micmac Indian name for a lake in Quebec -- Medicine Dream leader Paul Pike largely succeeds in creating an attractive blend of traditional drumming and chanting with a balladeering approach reminiscent of the '80s band America. In perhaps the best cut of the 12 on the CD, "Thousands of Years of Love," Pike's strong tenor mixes elegantly with female backup vocals by Cea Anderson, guitars, keyboards and, most impressively, chant accompanied by the big communal drum that figures prominently in most of the band's songs and its stage act.
The chant starts in the background, like a ghost or a memory, and emerges alive and in the forefront by the end of the song. The structure varies from standard rock repetition with some intriguing turns into fresh material before coming around to the original tune again, a really handsome example of composition.
The chant is sometimes the main ingredient, as in "Missing You," in which the ballad-type lyrics ("Oh my family, how I love you ... If you're lonely, know I miss you") are fairly shouted out. Or in the final number, "Petals," composed by Buz Daney, who generally leads the drummers and chanting.
The most beautiful music comes when Pike picks up his Native American flute and takes the spotlight, forgoing vocals altogether. The opening title cut is a jaunty, heartfelt welcome to the album. "Ktaqmkuk" is a soulful, plaintive, soft-jazz inspiration.
"Tomegan Gospem" showed up at the same time as "Eagle Cries," the latest from award-winning Oneida songstress Joanne Shenandoah, and the local guys arguably outshine the national star. Shenandoah may have the better voice, but Pike's mixes are more varied and the album, overall, has better tunes and momentum.
More important for the general audience, Medicine Dream's political indulgences -- a recurring aspect in much that falls under the "Indian rock" category -- are less lugubrious, preachy and new-agey than Shenandoah's. The most overtly "message" song, "Hurtful Stories," about rumors spread during the French and Indian War and perpetuated in textbooks until recent times, is also one of the shortest.
The tracks were recorded at Surreal Studios in Anchorage, mixed and mastered in Phoenix, Canyon's home base.
I'm not the only one impressed by the effort. "Tomegan Gospem" is in the running for a Juno Award, the equivalent of a Grammy in Pike's country of origin, Canada. "Mawio'mi" was nominated for three Native American Music Awards when it was released in 1999. I'd expect the new CD to do even better. The CD-release party was last week, and you should be able to find the disc now at local record stores.
You might have more trouble getting your hands on "The Light That Fills the World," the newest recording of music by John Luther Adams of Fairbanks. That's because I've been running around town grabbing every copy I can find to send as gifts to friends in the Lower 48.
Adams has most often been mentioned as a highbrow composer, no competition for Megadeth, even though he can get just as loud. You may recall articles about him trekking into the Alaska wilderness to record the sounds of geese and wind to incorporate into symphonic compositions.
Sounds Twilight Zoney, but he's come a long way toward evoking the feel of Alaska in sound as well or better than most wilderness writers or photographers do in print or on film. His recent work defies categorization.
This new release from Cold Blue Music of Venice, Calif., features a sextet of top avant garde musicians on acoustic and electric instruments and percussion. Nathaniel Reichman, son of local actor-playwright Richard Reichman, receives credit for sound design.
In addition to the title cut, it includes "The Farthest Place" and "The Immeasurable Space of Tones." All are slow-moving walls of sounds, incrementally shifting lines that tend to resolve in great open fifths.
"Place" and "Light" clearly refer to Alaska landscapes, the sense of loneness when one finds oneself the only human in an area as large as Delaware, the all-encompassing day of summer solstice above the Arctic Circle. "Tones" is perhaps more intellectual, it's nature-notion coming from the mathematics of sound rather than the rhythms of geography, but its texture and pace are similar to the other two, and it is no less beautiful.
This is music of healing, best heard alone with plenty of time and no distractions. It lacks the cloying, sugary mindlessness of much that's marketed as new age or meditative music. It's more brainy and secure than that, though the sense of being outside one's body, an unconscious observer, pervades each alluring configuration.
Above all, it shimmers and sparkles like sun on diamond snow on a subzero day, which is why I'm shipping the CD to friends. "This is what it's like to be here," I tell them. By which I don't mean mosquitoes or rush-hour traffic in the dark or black ice after a williwaw, but being deep in the Chugach alone on a clear, windless day, or watching endless flakes fall outside your kitchen window on a morning when you have nothing important to pull you away from enjoying the view.
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