Peter Ulrich Collaboration – The Painted Caravan.
Journeyman Peter Ulrich is renowned for his drum and percussion work in acts such as Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil, and The Peter Ulrich Collaboration is a whole gypsy horde of musicians that have worked together to create The Painted caravan. First conceived by Peter and Trebor 'Big T' Lloyd, the CEO of City Canyon records, its principle collaborators are Ulrich, Lloyd, David Steele, Anne Husiak and Sarah Wendt. These many cooks have crafted a witch's brew of melody driven folk singlets with different inspirations and sounds in each song.
Musical inspiration comes from across the globe, but it's likely to appeal to fans of Dead Can Dance, lighter moments of PJ Harvey, Smoke Faries or Linda Thompson. In fact, given that each song in this album is so different I'm sure you'll find yourself picking a few tracks you love and some you will not. I personally liked the sound of Children of the Rain largely down to the vocal tracks that took what felt like a dated 90's soundtrack and dragged it kicking and screaming by its long hair into this decade. In it and other tracks the percussion grew tiresome and endless agogo scraping scratched away at my patience.
The insert for this CD lists no less than 50 different instruments (most of them various forms of drums) and this patchwork of sounds slammed together make a percussive flow and result in a choppy ride. Drug Of War took endless percussion a step further in its opening assault on the senses by using what I can only assume was all 50 instruments banged together to crate a war like sound of machine gun fire and battlefield explosions a bit like Metallica's One only without any of its delicacy.
Drum banging aside this is by far from the worst record I've ever heard and its various styles smashed together do make for interesting listening. If you like drums of course.