Savanna Radio by Arcturus Spring

Few musical projects that I've come across are as appropriately named as Savanna Radio. Evoking a plethora of sounds and images, the words making up this musical project's appellation paint vivid pictures of things as disparate as watching animals drink as the sun rises on the veldt, to being clustered around a grainy, tinny radio listening to Duke Ellington on a rainy night. There is a wide swath of scope covered here in the title alone, and the music certainly surpasses it with relentless ambition and focus. In some ways the album acts as an aural journey, we start with hints of civilization, rhythmic patterns paying homage to the musical traditions not only of the savanna, but also of the desert, the jungle, and river deltas both Nile and Mississippi. Over the course of the album, the musicians explore a variety of moods tones and styles, ranging far afield of any narrow genre connotation, potentially evoking comparisons to people but ultimately sounding like no one but themselves. Is it funk? Hell yeah it's funky, but this isn't one of those parliament 'everything is on the one' dishes, honey. Is it jazz? You best believe there is a ton of playing on this album to send people back out to the woodshed to get their chops up. Is it Afrobeat? Is it Blues? There are moments when it is both, there are moments when it is neither. It is the sound of a wide open world; a world full of different cultures and beliefs, a world where tradition and technology can exist in a beautifully chaotic balance. The weight of tradition, of progressions a hundred years old and the promise of the future, of untold musical amalgams and hybrids all present here. Forget genre, forget style, forget preconceived notions. Just don't forget to groove. - Ray Blum

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