Wow! If only every artist would come back after a long hiatus with such an impressive album like Misty Oldland. It’s been nearly eight years since her last (Japan-only) album Luminous. And Misty has obviously invested a lot of time, love, effort, craftsmanship, and talent in her latest record Forest Soul. As you may guess from the album title and from Misty’s website she has really soaked up an ecological lifestyle with the objective to protect nature and its species and to conserve our natural resources.
Forest Soul can best described as a concept album with ecological issues as main thread running through most of the songs. This sounds more academic written down than the result actually is.
In fact, Forest Soul can stand the comparison to some of soul music’s finest concept albums from the 70s like Songs In The Key Of Life by Stevie Wonder or What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye.

Misty’s greatest hit so far is Got Me A Feeling, but now she has a real hit record in the shape of, er, Hit Record, a groovy and funny song featuring Cleveland Watkiss and HKB Finn about the music industry and Misty’s intention to stay independent. Misty, please relase it as a single…I wanna see Hit Record as #1 hit record just for the pun of it (and of course its quality).

Orange Fox has already been available as a single (in a deluxe packing with illustrations and a very cute animated video version by Jonny Pompfrey). It’s a simple but very effective folksy tune. It could have been a great theme song for banning fox hunting in the UK, which is finally partly banned in England and Wales.

Roachford is featured on U Came, a fine modern soul song, that would’ve made US counterparts like Calvin Richardson or Anthony Hamilton proud.

Cracked Ship with its broken beats influences is another example of Misty’s versatility. This one was produced by Misty together with Joe Dworniak (of 80s British soul band I-Level fame). Joe also co-produced the afore mentioned U Came, the ultra soulful Angel and Not Afraid. The rest was produced by Misty who also wrote all songs on offer. There is no denying Misty’s talents if you really delve into this album and listen closely to it. The only song where Misty does a little too much to bring us her message is Civilized, that in itself is a beautiful ballad but for my taste is spoiled by an announcer and radio play snippets. There are still enough other very good songs like the funky Thank You Link (only disadvantage it’s too short) or Woman In Me, which reminds me a little of the way Kate Bush handles a song.

One might say that Forest Soul is one woman’s glorious attempt to save the world through music. Actually, I can’t argue with this if the result is a great album like this is. And to be honest I think Misty is right, the only question is if we really can undo the damage that has already been done to nature or are we’ve already destroyed nature up to a point where there’s no hope for improvement.
So make sure you get your piece of Forest Soul and do something good for yourself, your ears and even the environment, because this CD is produced carbon neutral and 50p for each album will be donated to Greenpeace.

Tracklisting of Forest Soul: 1. Pure Love/ 2. Sing It From The Heart/ 3. Hit Record/ 4. Orange Fox/ 5. Babinetics Link/ 6. U Came/ 7. Cracked Ship/ 8. Orang-Utan Link/ 9. Angel/ 10. Civilized/ 11. Soizic’s Prayer/ 12. Not Afraid/ 13. Grey Breasted Mountain Toucan Blues/ 14. Forest Soul Theme/ 15. Thank You Link/ 16. Woman In Me/ 17. Tunde’s Forest Link | released 2005 by Mistic Discs

For more infos visit mistyoldland.com.

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