Gabrielle Roth & the Mirrors

'Tongues'

Raven
Reviewed by Jack Donen

Gabrielle Roth is an American, known for her workshops and her writings on shamanism. She seems to place a lot of emphasis on dance, and this is her eighth recording with The Mirrors, her support group.
What you hear is a kind of late-night, funky trance dance. Slowish, often monotonously trance-inducing, with occasional highlights of more infectious, compelling rhythmic sequences. Never hard or harsh, yet more drivingly bluesy than what's normally called "ambient" today.
The Mirrors are an interchangeable lot with just a few regulars. There are lots of percussion instruments from all over the world around, making up rhythmic and sound patterns that constantly change place with each other. Electric guitars and a solid, funky bass are also part of the basics, with the addition of an occasional saxophone or a cello that can actually sound like a synthesizer (a real "synth" on two of the eight tracks).
And last but not least some very good vocalising - solo voices, but also mono- and polyphonic chants, sometimes meaningful lyrics, sometimes just hypnotically chanted nonsense syllables.
Blues-ballad, trance-dance. How about that.



This review is published on print in Djembe Magazine, no. 16, April 1996.
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