The tireless illuminator shines a celestial light from behind the Great Wall.
Old Rudyard would be ashamed, yet impressed, if he had the chance to listen to Dennis Rea's music: rare examples of perfect marriage of such Western invention as free jazz, as far removed from its African roots as can be, and traditional Chinese music, an unusual concoction for non-Eastern ear. But with a common point in the tonal exploration, the twain can meet, indeed, and Rea, having spent quite a time in the Celestial Empire, is a perfect mediator. Or his is a perfect mediator, if you think plectrum that works miracle here, on the guitarist's deepest album to date.
Its five long pieces organically shift from ethereal soundscapes to the fretwork blitz all the while building improvisational edifices on the Chinese and Taiwanese songs, both contemporary, as in the light Crawling King Snake dance of "Days By The Sea", and ancient, like the transparent, funereal "Tangabata" where the woodwind sew the skies to the silky ways. But it's a three-part title piece which leads there down the yellow pentatonic road, adorned with harmonies not intrinsic to the region's musical tradition but getting close in its string flow to the Renaissance-era Gallic folk and Lennon's "Oh My Love", before going Far East via the sharp blues riff. Then, "A Hundred Birds Serenade The Phoenix" sees some larking over its medieval drift, and the closer, "Eight Trigrams", welcomes techno and metal in its thundery, if soft, nucleus. Let yourself be enveloped, too, and the views that Rea offers become panoramic as if you were there.
*****
