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Broken Voyage
by Kelly David
Rocky Mountain Records, 2002
http://www.rockymountainrecords.com


        This album, produced by Colorado-based Kelly David and mixed by Steve
Roach, opens with an ear-catching explosion of electronic special effects.
From there it takes off on an ambient ride that goes from driving engine and
drum rhythms all the way to dark spacey drift. Broken Voyage uses the
familiar sounds that we know from Steve Roach-inspired albums: exotic
percussion, electronic loops, environmental sounds like crickets, rain, and
thunder, and long sustained synthesizer notes and chords.

        Though the Roach influence is strongly evident, David asserts a somewhat
different sound, less melodic and more abstract. David evokes other places
than the now-familiar Western desert; there are passages of what sound like
Pacific Island “tiki” music, or even ironic “lounge” rhythms, as well as a
Hendrix-like wailin' guitar interlude (played by Michael Brugman) on the
edgy track 5, “Cargo Cult.” David’s pacing is excellent; he moves from hard
rhythm to chilled drift, then back again, with professional ease, never
letting anything go on for too long. Even in his longest track, the
22-minute “Shadow Side” (track 3) he keeps the listener’s attention with
riveting railroad rhythms and dark abyssal industrial sound-colors. All of
these are wrapped in the trademark vast smooth space of Roach’s digital
reverb.

        Steve Roach, now in the prime of his career, has inspired what I would
call the “school of Steve Roach” ­ a generation of techno-ambient composers
using the Roach style to do works of their own. Some of these are unoriginal
imitators. Others, who have worked directly with Roach, such as Biff
Johnson, have taken this style in their own direction and found voices of
their own. Kelly David is one of the latter; David is a music veteran who
has taken up Roach’s techno-ambient genre in mid-stream. He has proven, in
this album, to be one of the school’s star graduates.

Hannah M.G. Shapero, EER-MUSIC.com
6/9/02


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