All Our Ancestors

Album review

Tuu is one of those bands that manages to straddle the seemingly disparate worlds of traditional ethnic music and ambient electronica, somewhat the same way that African Head Charge and Mouth Music do, but with very different results. In this case, the interactions between synthesist Mykl O'Dempsey, exotic percussionist Martin Franklin, and flutist Rebecca Lublinski (who spends most of her time on either the bansuri or the Chinese flute) result in a music that is dark and strangely unsettling, generally rhythmic but never funky, slow but never heavy. To call this music trance-inducing would be to overstate its demands on one's attention; once the dreamy mood is established on "Triple Gem of Wisdom" at the head of the program, it doesn't really vary until "Shiva Descending" at the very end -- a track so ambient it's almost subliminal. Remind yourself to pay attention once in a while during the course of the album and you'll come across some interesting things, but, for the most part, All Our Ancestors does its job best as pleasantly eerie background noise.
© Rick Anderson /TiVo