Kaya Project - Walking Through

( Interchill , May. 2004 )



1. Walking Through 6:12 
2. Slide 6:06 
3. Labess 6:08 
4. Olelo 4:54 
5. Twin Soul 6:36 
6. Irina Mikhailova & B Smiley- Nightflower (Kaya Project remix) 6:18 
7. Kanzaman Breaks 6:58 
8. Tribal Shift 6:15 
9. Stone Turns Black 5:40 100bpm 5:33 
10. Only the Brave 6:24 
11. Resolve 2:25 
12. Rise Above 5:20

Seb Taylor, known as Shakta/Digitalis and other trancey disguises, as well as being one of the moving forces behind the successful Angel Tears (1, 2, 3 & soon to come 4) project, is here with his own chill project- Kaya Project. This is very much like Angel Tears with a bit more spice.

Walking Through open things up with the beat and rhythms and overall oriental middle-eastern feel that is present all through the album. Slide next is an amazing fusion of that feel with bluesy slide guitar- a great tune, and a favorite in my sets for quite a while. Labess features the heavenly voice of Irina Michailova (and not for the last time). Something is missing in this track, for some reason it doesn't sound authentic or real enough. Olelo (T4) takes a little turn with great chanting vocals (sounding Maori or from some other pacific realm), grabbing darbuka work and beautiful percussion, all creating some mellow yet optimistic mood. Beautiful.
Twin Soul (T5) is another beauty with great vocals and beautiful flutes, and as everywhere on this release- great darbukas and percussion. In the same mood we get Irina again in the remix to Nightflower, which gets in a bit of a psychedelic and mysterious feel accompanied by beautiful guitars and Arab violins. It also takes the tempo up a bit, and that goes on with Kanzaman Breaks (T7), a real great darbuka dance piece! Kanzaman means "once upon a time" in Arabic, and you can easily imagine yourself here wearing long galabias and dancing in the desert around a fire sometime in the past. The dancing atmosphere continues with Tribal Shift- a more deep and tribal piece with pagan chanting and trancey atmosphere. Stone Turns Black continues the tribal feel but in a more relaxed atmosphere with more Arabic feel in it. Only the Brave (T10) feature beautiful guitar play by Seb that really makes this track beautiful. Resolve is a short interlude of beautiful strings play that leads to Rise Above that ends the CD with very relaxed atmosphere and more soothing guitar riffs.

Recomendation: A beautiful meltdown of middle-eastern and oriental sounds and electronica, with a lot of vocals and instruments. The outcome is very musical, very organic and very nice relaxing listening material. Nothing ground/mind breaking- just very good music.
Favorites: 2(!!), 4, 5(!!), 6, 7(!), 8, 11, 12(!).

Review by : Shahar