Hu VibrationalBoonghee Music 1Review

More intriguing stuff from Scott Herren's Eastern Developments label. HuVibrational are percussionists Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake, whose experience straddles jazz, free improvisation and ethnic musics with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Jon Hassell, Ken Vandermark and Yusef Lateef. Both men played with trumpeter Don Cherry, whose multi kulti collisions find plenty of echoes here.

Rudolph and Drake set up sinewy, intricate grooves that coalesce into a kind of mutant acoustic ethno house music. The opening "Calling to the Water Goddess" places keening flutes and whispered vocal over an insistent pulse of clay drums and thumb pianos, punctuated by occasional bursts of talking drum."Bonus Beats" opens with funky kit drums with smeared bass notes from an Udu (African clay drum) before giving way to a bubblingly visceralclay drum workout. If this doesn't end up in a few dance producers sample libraries, there's no justice (particularly if Rudolph and Drake don't get paid).

"Transformation" comes on like an out-take from a Codona album; harmonium drones and wandering dussun'goni bass ride on a casually complex network of udu and handclaps. There's no ego massaging solos; Rudolph and Drake find enough fascination in the generation of the groove.

The last two tracks are from Rudolph's Contemplations album (whose Moving Pictures Group includes Drake), and are less engaging; "Meditation" is an insubsantial flute duet, while on"Mirto" the pairing of batucada derived beats and charango goes nowhere much.

Elsewhere though, Drake and Rudolph's Fourth World music sounds unforced, joyous and is pretty addictive. The recordingforgoes the glossy digital reverb of a Michael Brook production or the ethnodub sheen of a Bill Laswell mix for a natural, intimate audio verite approach, which only adds to its immediacy and lack of pretension. Give the drummers some....