Search - Nils Petter Molvaer :: Khmer

Hard to listen to.

Peter S. Fitzgibbon | Roanoke, VA | 08/06/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I was very excited to own this album knowing that this was a jazztronica album from one of the ECM masters. After struggling to listen to this album several times I have to say Molvaer would do better to stick to the more straight ahead, or perhaps find another producer for such outings.

The electronic textures and ambience are fine, and the playing is nothing less than you would expect. Really it's just the beats that make this album unlistenable to me. Extremely cheesy and extremely cliche. My friend commented to me that it reminds him of a 90's movie soundtrack. I think that's about right.

Molvaer is a great player, but he's a bit out of touch with some of the genres he was hoping to capture on this record.

For jazztronica I would go with Dave Douglas' "Freak In" or the aforementioned E.S.T."

Will Get Your Door Panels Flapping!

Karl W. Nehring | Ostrander, OH USA | 07/29/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Remember when--thanks mostly to Sting--the term "synchronicity" was all the rage? Well, a couple of days before Christmas I was in a used CD store and picked up a copy of Khmer. I knew nothing about it, but I usually find ECM recordings interesting and I thought the instrumentation listed on back (e.g., trumpet, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, samples, and even a guy credited for "sound treatment") sounded promising, so I took a chance and brought it home, where I promptly stuck it on a shelf to sit idly while I played mostly Christmas CDs for the next couple of days. On Christmas morning, one of the Christmas presents under our tree was a small but relatively heavy package marked for Dad that turned out to be The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions.



Needless to say, the trumpet of Miles Davis was soon heard in the Nehring house--not exactly traditional Christmas music, but most enjoyable on a cold winter's day in Ohio. Later that evening, I was looking around for something to play, and I remembered that I had bought a few new CDs recently. I saw Khmer sitting there on the shelf and decided it might be worth a quick listen--surprise of surprises, it sounded like a '90s version of Bitches Brew. Synchronicity!



What we have here are two disks, a 42-minute main disk and a 19-minute "dance mix" disk with vigorously variant versions of four of the cuts from the main disk. All of the music features Molvaer's Miles-like trumpet weaving in and out of an electronic tapestry that is recorded with plenty of little phase flips that make the soundstage--even in antiquated two-channel playback (WARNING: possible sarcasm detected)--T-H-I-S B-I-G. The music is not as complex as that on Bitches Brew, but is much more danceable. Fun, fun stuff, and one of the best CDs I have found for playing in the car in a long, long, time. You start your journey playing the main disk, then you slap in the dance mix to really get your door panels flapping."