Western Water Music, Vol. II

Album Review

Experimental DJ and producer Nobody has long established his ability to work with a variety of different artists. He's collaborated with rappers and remixed songs for all sorts of bands, and so his transition to working with singers in 2003 with Pacific Drift: Western Water Music, Vol. 1, proved to be seamless enough. In 2008, for the second volume, Nobody decided to have only one vocalist, Niki Randa, a colleague of his from the same Long Beach record store. The result, Western Water Music, Vol. II, is a conceptual album based around the idea of a giant flood that sinks California, and the instrumental arrangements do a good job of reflecting this, bending and swelling and retreating like the water they're inspired by. This is not a destructive, terrifying flood; instead, it's one that envelopes and calms and changes, and this kind of mystical quality is heard in the intricately layered guitars and keys, the swirling percussion and samples, the whole thing very ethereal, very lush and lovely with only the occasional hints of unrest, like the spacey "Blank Blue," the minor chords of "The Spectral Company," the brooding, Afro-beat-inspired rhythm section. It's this subtlety that makes the music intoxicating, alluring, but unfortunately, Randa does not have the same effect. While she certainly has a nice voice — smooth and clean and very professional — she isn't quite able to convey the degrees of emotion that the subject matter necessitates. Her words — those that can be picked out — are revealing but cryptic, bordering on the edge of cheesy ("The sea is calm now, you are of the water folk now," she sings in the redemptive "Sea Roars Lead"), but she can't quite back up the ideas. It's too soothing, too nice, too clean, and while these adjectives all have their place, their domination dampens the album's overall feeling and almost becomes an irritant, and makes Western Water Music, Vol. II feel more like an overflowing bathtub than an overpowering, species-changing flood.