Underground Orchestra

Active Ingredient

(Wyman Records)

US release date: 6 June 2006

by Marc A. Price

I could wax lyrical about how these ten instrumental pieces are so well crafted, and how the musicianship of the band is beyond reproach. These two statements might be true, however, I won’t do that. This album is barely dull, and if I encouraged anyone to go out and listen to it I would be derelict in my duty as reviewer of CDs. Give it a miss; even your older brother would hate this record. The thing is that it is neither one thing nor the other. The songs meander between jazz, funk, fusion, and Middle Eastern, never pausing to stay in one camp long enough to figure out if it would like to remain there or not before setting off again to find somewhere else to be. And, yes, that sentence was deliberately long and convoluted, just like Underground Orchestra’s Active Ingredient.

— 24 August 2006
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