Alderman - Sunset Over Andama Sea

Hear The Track Here

BTaking into account the absolutely ludicrous positioning of Soundclick's Critics Corner forum (ie it's right down at the bottom of the forum list) it is no wonder that the fall-off of posting in there is so noticeable. This has been - in the past anyway - one of the most fruitful, useful and informative (to a normal listener) place to come to see what on SC is good, judged by their own peers. God only knows why this change was made, but personally I can see only disaster if it isn't fixed and fixed soon. Take, for example, my reviews and my signups. There was a time when I would get over 30 tracks for review in less than 24 hours; since the forum change I'm lucky to scrape past 20, and that isn't because no-one wants the reviews. They just don't find it any more.

Alderman has been a firm favourite of mine ever since I first met him on another site about four years ago. I have a ton of his tracks on my hard drive; and he has been in my year end reviews every year since I started them. So, it's a given then that I would like pretty much anything that comes from his direction from the collabs he does (Jim-n-Lisa, Christopher Martin Hansen et al) to his own material. Matter of fact his last track (Visions, March 2007) was both his own work AND a collaboration - with CMH and was deemed a Must Have track by me and I've heard no reason to change that since. More to the point it is by far the best track I have ever heard from this artist and that, I suspect, has to do with the calibre of people Leif (for it really is he) chooses to work with. Suffice to say that this is one track I looked forward to reviewing, I have heard it before (on Mike K's Saturday Night Rocks radio show) and was blown away at how neatly the man had managed to sneak some of my thunder.

Well, I say 'my' but of course that isn't the case.

There be fekkin millions of people making World Music but I do look at it as being my 'home' genre. Alderman has flirted with the genre before in various ways, but never to this point making an out and out world music track. In lesser hands, I would have been shovelling shit in all directions by now, but Alderman has learned enough to know how to do it and how not to overdo it. Inspired by his recent trip Alderman has put the experience to use in making an aural diary of the event. Got to hand it to the guy, he's gone a long, long way on the authenticity front - there are some gorgeous world sounds in this track. As Alderman himself states, it's a tad more Indian than anything else, but there's enough regional differences within the main instruments that it'll do as a quick thumbnail ramble through the area's musical delights. Therefore, you should probably have a taste for ethnic instruments (of the Asian subcontinent particularly) but if you like the genre, you will take to this like a member of the Anatinae family to molecular liquid. (Ed: he probably means like a duck to water, but the drugs are obviously kicking right in).

Highly Recommended World music. An authentic gem.