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Dino Pacifici: Acquiescent Resonance (Dance Plant - 1998) From Canada comes Dino Pacifici's electronic music... An immaculately recorded selection, but too often new-agey and not often ambient. While Acquiescent Resonance is expertly produced, much of the sound palette simply goes against my grain, not to say that I don't have a couple of favorites amongst the lot. |
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An odd blend of synth waves, new age flute and fairly funky beats, with oriental noodlings make up Dreams in Green. It's like Muzak only cooler. Beats, horn blares, loungey keyboards and whispered male voice samples pepper It's Gotta Have Soul. Sax sounds give it that Steely Dan lite-jazz sound, but... soul? A low, spoken vocal names off the things Itzabout. Soft jazz guitar flows and synth accompanies. Nicely done, but too immaculate for my own tastes... Frantic distortedly clattering bamboo brings on Night where a big whisper says things like "She walks in beauty like the night". Wanky wah-wah meets synth flow, bass and beats.
Getting warmer, Acquiescent Resonance is also muzaky, though drummier, with guitar, synths and prog-rock-lite transitions. Things get spacier (and more to my own liking) with Weird Science, a cooler, darker, more low-key electronic atmosphere with bass and beats, though even here, some of the keyboards are rather overt. More stereotypical new age sounds inhabit the Shadow Lands, though some nice little background touches are found there (including bells, bellows, and odd turntable scritchies). Moving on to the Distant Hills, we find a more breathable atmosphere. Smoother synth stylings and a bassy rhythm are appreciably less blatant. In the early '80s this would have been exciting stuff... Though the accompanying voice sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, The Awakening uses clanky percussion, a disco beat, blaring horns and dubby bass to empower the groovy track. The entire bag of tricks is dumped into See Beyond which seems to last longer than 4:23... funky electrobeats, robotic handclaps, synth choirs, a synthetic bassline and dozens of bursts, blares and DJ effects. Despite the ambitious jumble, it still comes across as squeakily clean. Opening on that deep voice (Dino, is that you?) and percussion, perc-u-later (7:46) picks up a driving rhythm, deep swells and a jangly sitar-like accompaniment. Things just flow more smoothly here; again rather antiseptic, but in this case it gels for me. I can groove to this! (At a couple points, the voice says "See beyond..." which was the name of the previous song... a reference or a track mix-up?) The final breeze of Windsong is real sweepy and blubbery... Often lush, quite nice, just too darn (and I apologize for throwing this term around so much) new-agey, despite the accomplished arrangement (and a pretty cool bass effect).
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| I'm sure there are many folks who can more fully appreciate these fine efforts. You should just go to Dino's website to hear samples for yourself. Balancing my personal tastes with acknowledgement of studio prowess and hard work yields a 5.9 for Acquiescent Resonance. |  |