Musicarian and Densyl - Scenes Of Life

Hear The Track Here

Looking back over the first few reviews I did for Pakistani based Salman Anwar (aka Musicarian) back in 2004, I don't think I was all that impressed, or at least that's the impression the reviews give me now. I was impressed, as it happens, by the man's solid guitar skills but not, alas by his choice of material to showcase that talent. He didn't get panned sure enough, but it was lukewarm to be sure. Fast forward four years, and Musicarian appears out of the blue with Get Your Soul Reborn (December 2008), an amazingly good jazz fusion track that showed he hadn't been idle in all that time. Far from it, he's been perfecting his art as the Must Have I gave him at the time showed. He's peppered this year with a couple of good tracks too, showing that this is no one off thing.

Scenes Of Life is a collaboration between Musicarian and Denysl, a Canadian musician I have reviewed a couple of times now. They met apparently on Soundclick's Critics Corner forum, batted some ideas around and this collab was born. The original song is by Denysl, a song written in the 1970's about the Vietnam War, completely updated and arranged by Salman and resung by Densyl and I must say they have done an excellent job. I think I would probably not have been too kind to the original of this track though, I shamefacedly admit. This has more to do with my personal preference though so nothing to get touchy about.

Scenes of Life is billed as Jazz Fusion but to my ears it owes much, much more to rock - and folk rock at that. The essence of it is that Denysl is a folk rocker at heart, and so is the song. Salman has done an outstanding job on giving it zing, through the production and his effortlessly fluid playing but - down deep - this is still yer average folk rock tune and always will be. Sung and played faultlessly mind, and that has to say something. Ultimately a track like this is going to be a matter of taste anyway and - to be honest - it isn't to mine. Nonetheless, these guys have done a sterling job with it and if you like the sound of it, it's definitely worth a listen for the production values alone if for nothing else.