Quote:
Originally Posted by NumberNineDream
The third part of his career, moving on to just composing studio albums. After Joseph Sakr died, Ziad continued to compose for other artists he would hand pick. The latest was Salma, an unknown artist that only sang on this album. She was picked for her unusual "un-tuned" voice. Have a listen, from the album Salma monodose
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So NumberNineDream was cool enough to send me this when I requested it. I really enjoyed this album a lot and, after sorta raving about it, I was more or less dared to review it in this thread as a "Foreign ear". ><
I still donno if I should do a review, as I'm not the expert here, but I'll discuss why I liked it at least.
To start off I'll just say, this is a lot of fun to listen to. Musically, some of it sounds like stuff I'm pretty familiar with...quite jazzy and swing sounding, with alot of piano and brass. There's quite a few instruments mixed in that I don't know though, as well as some random ones that took me by surprise. The fourth song for example,
Gingele, starts with some loud whistles like you might here in a marching band. At one point you even here a loud bird call?! I'm not sure what that is at the :15 second mark either, but I like it!
If I had to pick one thing...the piano work is probably what stands out the most to me over the course of Salma Monodose. But everything here works well together though, and the entire album is almost all very upbeat. My head was nodding the entire time.
The vocals on here are very nice. The singers "un-tuned" voice is still very pretty I think, and pleasant sounding. Occasionally she is joined by a chorus of voices behind hers which is fun, as well as a sorta creepy-sounding man who jumps in randomly and kinda takes me by surprise when he does. The ninth song on here also has a very nice, love-sounding duet, with her and a man who is not-so-creepy sounding.
Of course I can't really understand anything that's actually being sung here, which isn't a horrible thing really. I can pretty much tell by the tone which songs are happy (most of them), sad (Black&Why), and about love (Ma Bitfid). Since I'm not able to understand, I can actually use my imagination and picture my own ideas of what they're about, which is fun.
As for favorites...I'd probably pick
Gingele as mine. I actually picture this as a song from a musical, where she is walking down the street singing, in the middle of a parade. I love the chorus here, especially when the crowd of people starts singing along with her. Other favorites are
Assaada Allahou Masa'akom (SO funky) and
Ma Bitfid, which is a slow and soft love duet, with mostly just soft piano and bass accompaniment.
All in all, very cool album, and I think others would enjoy it. I honestly might think of buying it if the only copy I could find online wasn't $120.
Anyway, I'm likin' this thread a lot. Keep it up imo.
(^That is pretty much a review isn't it...jeez. 0_0)