Finally the Original Soundtrack for Legends Of The Underground Mark de Clive-Lowe mentioned in his interview with jazz-not-jazz will be released on September 15th, 2005.
Legends Of The Underground is a theater production which combines dance, music and 3D animation in a live show. “It’s a trilogy and we did one part of the trilogy. They must have had about thirty dancers, European classical dancers, some breakers from Korea, jazz dancers from England, some Dutch kids and many other kinds,” Mark said in an interview with dancemusic.about.com. “They had all the dancers and then a 3D animation which was going out at the same time, and then our ridiculous cinematic afro- cosmic broken soundtracks going on.”
Seiji from Bugz In The Attic was asked to create a soundtrack for the performance and he in turn invited Mark de Clive-Lowe, Domu, Bembe Segue and Rasiyah to join him on the project. For fans of said musicians this must be a wild West London wet dream come true.
“It was the first time in a while for me that I was able to work on something where we had free reign to do whatever we wanted,” Mark de Clive-Lowe says. “No consideration for singles, DJs, radio play, anything - it was purely about creating sonic art that would help tell the story and inspire the dancers. I hear it as one of the great jazz fusion projects of our time - 2005’s answer to the classic jazz fusion of the 70s.”
The question is does this album work without the pyrotechnic dance show? Yes, it works very well on its own. Certainly the mainly instrumental tracks like Introduction, The Devine Room or The Gathering Part II will benefit when played on stage with the interaction of dancers and 3D animation. But the three full vocal songs The Gathering Part I, The Scrolls & The Gift and Paradise Garden make more than up for that. Especially Paradise Garden with inspiring vocal input by Bembé Segué and Rasiyah and additional musicians like Dave Okumu (guitar), Finn Peters (flute, sax) and Claus Toft (congas) is a great melange of broken beats, funk and jazz with nine minutes length of time; worth the album’s price alone. The Dark Room acts as a short introduction for Anarchite City, a raw, hard hitting techno/electro track. In fact, this one’s a little bit too noisy for my taste but judging it in the context it’s a fitting climax for this soundtrack.
Overall this album is a very interesting offer of what happens when musicians just let flow the creative juices.

Tracklisting of Original Soundtrack: 1. Introduction/ 2. The Divine Room/ 3. The Gathering Part I/ 4. The Gathering Part II/ 5. The Scrolls & The Gift/ 6. Paradise Garden/ 7. The Dark Room/ 8. Anarchite City | released 2005 Kindred Spirits

For more infos visit kindred-spirits.nl, rushhour.nl, bugzintheattic.net, markdeclivelowe.net and legendsoftheunderground.com.

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