IDC Goddess Gaia

SAN FRANCISCO, CA USA

October 16, 2004

739 plays
20,069 views

Goddess Gaia - Various Artists
IDC cat# 0009 / PYRA 2103

Upbeat electronica-meets-world-fusion for your dancing & listening pleasure.
 
In a unique collaboration with Egyptian percussionist  Reda Darwish, producer Greg Gordon has created a lush bed of sonic  textures and middle eastern intsrumentation laced with hard driving dance beats.  Adding vocal melodies and lyrics from their native languages are The Goddesses: Irina, Sami, Feli, & Elana. Lacing it all together is Goddess Gaias secret sauce, the mind expanding sound and pulsating  rhythm of The Psychedelic Jews Harp created and performed  by Jacob  Max  Nasim. This compilation cries out to the material world to acknowledge our dependency on  beautiful Gaia, planet earth, and asks that we honor and respect her in a way befitting any mother or maternal
deity.


Featured Artist:
Irina Mickailova who has recorded & performed with Ancient Future, Lumin,  Eastern European choral ensemble Kitka and pop sensation Jewel.

    * Headlining performance at The No. Ca. Health & Harmony Festival
    * Ground breaking and visually enticing ethno-techno live performance
    * Cross over appeal: electronica dance to world music
    * Co-op print ads and extensive push at college and specialty radio in all key markets.
    * Molihta/The One I Love: Featured Track on UBL musics Revive The Soul Compilation to be released October 04. 10,000 units will be pressed for distribution world wide.

      Track Listing

   1. Samsara
   2. Sweet Soul Potion
   3. Ylele/Catch Me If You Can
   4. New Moon Dance
   5. Zouk/Dear Friend
   6. Molihta/The One I Love
   7. Afreeka 8. Son Mi Doide/Dragonfly
   8. Lalli
   9. Malle Modre/I Have Nothing 

MUSIC SAMPLES COMING SOON!

 

Review from CD Baby- Goddess Gaia-

"Here it is in late 2003 and suddenly a new and exciting album breaks upon the music scene: Greg Gordon's Goddess Gaia. Four "goddesses" contribute to a celebration of cultures. Irina Mikhailova from Russia; Elana Solari the American influence; Sami Kaneda from Japan; and Felicity Tchaco Leye from Africa. How all these goddesses came into the life of Greg Gordon remains a mystery, and it is perhaps best to leave it so. What matters is their music. Irina, the Russian Goddess, is the greatest contributor to this album, being co-author of most of the songs, and also singing on most of the tracks. And it is a good thing. True, Greg's unique production style has its own cohesion, but I think Irina's vocals are what really hold this album together. The opening track, Samsara, features Irina's beautiful harmonies combined with Greg's compelling rhythmic groove. It is one of the best tracks on the album. Irina also sings on Ylele, which Greg infuses with a British electro-pop undercurrent. Irina's vocal harmonies shine, and these harmonies are one of Irina's greatest strengths. The final track on the album, Malle Modre, features more of Irina's heartfelt emotion and beautiful singing, but I wanted more of the wonderful harmonies here, which made me want to dance! Molihta is a more lightly orchestrated Irina song, but like all her songs, it engages the listener. Dragonfly is more successful than Molihta; light in spirit, but more fully developed and finely honed than Molihta. Irina is accompanied on this track by a lonely violinist, who plays off in the distance to her whispered incantations. Dragonfly offers a sonic retreat from the energetic A-Free-Ka, featuring African Goddess Feli Tchaco. Her ululations are accompanied by an electric guitar so that the tribal rhythms are rocked out in the western style. The blend is partly successful. Greg Gordon has produced a sonic panorama, but sometimes on this album I lose the focus. The best results are achieved when Greg sticks to a single musical style, because that's what makes a song memorable. Nowhere is this difference of styles in a single track more evident than in the enigmatic Lalli, which contrasts Japan and Egypt. When Sami Kaneda sings, and she has a very rich voice, the song is Japanese, because Sami brings it there. When instrumentalist and collaborator Reda Darwish sings, the song, along with Reda's Arabic-North African intrumentation, makes the song Egyptian. The contrasts of this song are ultimately distracting, even though the song is beautifully produced. More successful is Sami Kaneda's New Moon Dance. Here we have travelled to Tokyo, and it is like sitting in a Japanese nightclub and listening to the Japanese equivalent of the Steve Miller Band. Sami's voice is complemented by Feli Tchaco's, but the overall feeling is Japanese. There is something very distinctive about the voice trained in the Japanese style. Greg's cool bubbling synth-arpeggiations cascade through the sonic weave. This song definitely breaks ground. But what about the Fourth Goddess, Elana? Where is she. She sings on only one song, and speaks on another. Elana is the mysterious Goddess. She is humoring Greg, it seems, by her enigmatic presence on only two tracks. The overall Gaia Experience is complemented by the truly engaging album artwork by Joseph Browning. I do not say that Joseph's artwork is beautiful because he is my brother. It really is quite beautiful. And yet, one doesn't quite know what to make of the album cover, which features a consternated baby. (In fact, a marketing mistake. Babies do not appeal to the twenty-somethings that are, as I see it, the principal target audience. Nor to the gay audience, who I think could be big supporters.) But opening the trifold, we are treated to an incredible and colorful group portrait of the four goddesses. The women pose in their new-millenium retro-tribal outfits, all except for the enigmatic Elana, who wears black. Blended behind them are design elements which are, for lack of a better descriptor, soul prints. Irina is an Arctic Queen, surrounded by a nimbus of celestial energy; Elana a mysterious Goddess of Flight with her Arch of Eagle Feathers; Sami a Goddess of Fertility, with vines rendered like the borders of a Medieval illuminated manuscript, but also evoking French turn-of-the-century poster art; Felicity wears a headdress of Egyptian reeds. These Goddesses seem to rise from the misty mountains that appear behind them. Unfolding the CD package further, we get a dark blue seascape which serves as the background for track and player information on the left, and lyrics and composer information on the right. A Moon floats in the sky and holds a secret message. And in the center of the trifold, behind the transparent CD mount, we find a sacred geometry with a second portrait of the four Goddesses, and Lo! With them is Producer Greg Gordon. One can examine and meditate on these images while listening to the entire album, and never be bored. Samsara and Malle Modre could both be big hits, and I think Malle Modre could be a dance-house hit with a remix that adds another refrain of the beautiful harmony, and a more danceable edit. (Malle Modre: Dance Mix, coming soon?) All in all, an engaging audiovisual experience!"

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