I have to admit that it took me a while to find a way into their music because I wasn't accustomed to their approach. While I've listened to quite a bit of contemporary jazz in recent years and have been steadily gaining an ability to appreciate it, this disc initially left me confounded. Admittedly, part of that was due to my ambivalence to the use of synthesizers, which feature in the first few tracks of the CD, and it wasn't until I was able to get beyond those feelings that I began to enjoy this disc. However, part of the difficulty does lie in the fact that this is music that continually takes you by surprise as you're listening to it.
Unless you're prepared not to anticipate what's going to happen bar to bar in the music, you will end up feeling perplexed, puzzled, and not a little lost. Yet, if you are willing to let go of preconceived notions of what you think music is supposed to do, you will find yourself being taken on some really spectacular voyages by superlative musicians. Kai Eckhardt (bass), Fareed Haque (guitars), Alan Hertz (drums), and Eric Levy (keyboards) are your guides on this journey, and they'll take you as far as you're willing to go.
There are some musicians who write comic songs, and there are even some of them who manage to be relatively humorous, but there have been precious few who have written music that makes me genuinely laugh out loud. On wOOt's first two tracks, "Semos" and "Hotel" the sounds that Eric Levy produces via his keyboards, (I'm assuming the synthesized sounds were produced by the keyboards, but they could also have been generated by Fareed Haque using a synthesized guitar) were so absurd that I couldn't help laughing at them. Once I was able to overcome my personal bias, I realized just how much fun the band was having with these two tracks and enjoyed them for that reason. It was almost like they were letting you know that although this was pretty complicated music that you shouldn't take it too seriously. Lighten up and enjoy yourself already, they seem to be saying, because we are.
It was only after about the third time that I listened to the disc (okay I admit I'm slow sometimes) that I realized just how much fun Garaj Mahal was having playing what they were recording. I don't know if I've ever heard a more exuberant sounding group of musicians. Unlike so many other ensembles who always seem so serious, these guys haven't forgotten that what they're doing is called playing. No matter how intense the music gets, and it does get really intense at moments, there's always that underlying feeling of how excited they are to be making music and how much pleasure and joy they get from it.
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