Welcome to another production of technological music by David Lyndon Huff, Rhythm Of Creation - Voice of Africa. This is the followup to Rhythm Of Creation, which was nominated for a Dove Award. As I recall the lush ambience that the first album captivated me with, this project has a lot to live up to.
Voice Of Africa has a lot to offer. The techno ambience still runs smooth, but instead of the Sacred Latin and chanting vocals that the first album used so well, this project replaces that with an African choir. More specifically, it is the Mooi River Zulu Mambaso from South Africa. The ambience runs smooth and fast using many different rhythms, some of which are more African tribal-sounding. However, the African choir vocals do not blend in with this ambient music as well as the ancient European chanting did for the first album. There is always a distinct difference between the programmed music racing along the African terrain, and the slower, more black gospel sounding vocals of the Mooi River Zulu Mambaso. Most of the time, I found this unsettling, but there are a few times when they make this work quite well.
For the most part, the first two songs fit my above description: two different types of music not blending all that well. However, I did notice something interesting about the first song that doesn't necessarily carry on throughout the rest of the album, but it made my ears perk up with interest. In "Ayanqikaza (Be Steadfast)," there are distinct "spook house" sounds that one might hear from a Joy Electric production. This made for an interesting piece to listen to. The third song, "Silindili (We Are Waiting)," kicks off the beginning of the more African tribal techno beats (which may have been an oxymoron up until now), and the rest of the album follows up to that measure. The three songs on this album that blend the vocals and the ambient music well would be "Ushilo (He Has Declared)," "Mbonge (Praise Him)," and "Nkosi Sikelela (Lord Set Us Free)." The best out of the three would be "Mbonge (Praise Him)" because it has more African tribal chants instead of choir vocals which seem to blend better in this music.
Despite the small difficulties that the lack of blending between the vocals and music creates, this is a valiant attempt at experimenting with uncharted musical territory. I look forward to seeing what will be next in this series.
