Search - Banco de Gaia :: Maya

Good selections for a DJ's set, but unsatisfying as an artis

Christopher Culver | 06/14/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"MAYA, released in 1992, is Toby Mark's first album under his Banco de Gaia moniker. It's nine tracks fall into the ambient, acid house, or dub genres. All feature what is BdG's trademark, the use of samples which are either taken from indigenous musical traditions of the world (Middle East mutterings, Bushmen chants), or from other sources but electronically altered to sound like they are from indigenous musics. I find BdG's music interesting as a document of an era when this kind of exotica was penetrating youth culture more than at any time since the 1960s. Though its kitchen sink collection of Third World sample joined to the predictable 4/4 beat of house, Banco de Gaia seem to represent musically the global village the world was fast becoming.



The tracks here would make a solid contribution to a DJ set, but as an artist album I find it unsatisfying. All of the tracks seem to meld into each other, and there's no enough diversity to make you feel you're getting your money's worth. Certainly Toby Marks alleviated this in later efforts, especially when he put the slightest touch of pop into his 2000 album IGIZEH, but this early effort doesn't quite have it down yet."