STRIPPED BARE, CHANTING AROUND THE BONFIRE
Because of the innate foreign element, Tribal Ambient oftentimes adheres to strict, unsettling sounds that would make first-world listeners uneasy. It's that otherworldliness, that fear of the unknown, which attracts. However, Emmanuelle Parrenin and Detlef Weinrich's Jours De Grève doesn't believe in such a reproach. Striking, given that one's from Paris, the other Düsseldorf. Not exactly two locales tethered to primitive ideals. Yet here, exoticism is embraced and welcomed. Though the vocals are impenetrable to many, their fantastical hooting and hollering lend pleasantries above repudiation, the ritualized drums buoyant and accepting, not dangerous and barbaric. Jours De Grève is a modernized take on outdated concepts, intent on bridging cultures by stripping the abhorrence garnered by many.
Highly rhythmic, Parrenin and Weinrich take the same approach to African music as Talking Heads and Brian Eno did back in the early 80's. It's quirky and, at times, irresistible, seen best on 'Caltec's Dance' and 'A Zombi's Passport.' There's tantalizing multi-layering, with a web of mechanical elements to offset the pure, unprocessed sound elsewhere, akin to Carl Stone's take on World Music. Ghedalia Tazartès' vocal performance matches the tone perfectly, gaily leaping around structural evolutions with seemingly-improvised yaps. Some songs entertain such celebratory formalities for their entire duration, but others, like 'Hephaistos Breeze,' master the art of deception through about-face expansion. The opening moments present a tickling sense of precariousness, before incorporating a wealth of instrumentation to conjure up something anyone can dance to. And that's largely, I presume, what Jours De Grève is about; humanities kinship with merriment. Unorthodox as it may be, we all once started as nescient primates.
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