Spirits Burning - Our Best Trips: 1998- 2008

Spacerock supergroup across a decade...

Don Falcone set Spirits Burning on their continuing mission just as the internet began to open up an index of collaborative possibilities that studio recordings and logistics previously precluded: the chance for content-creators to recruit musicians on an ad hoc basis across the ether; musicians they’d have scant hope of playing with face-to-face.

In the space-rock community, Falcone has done particularly well out of this approach, meaning that this survey of his first 10 years under the Spirits Burning banner throws up some surprising contributors whose participation in recording his music might shock even their most ardent of followers. Though he’s avoided double-dipping a previous round-up of his work with David Allen (Glissando Grooves), he has selected Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson’s slide guitar from The Ticking Of Science, High Tide’s violin genius Simon House on Earth Born and Jefferson Starship drummer Trey Sabatelli on his cover of Planet Gong’s Opium For The People.

Such involvement doesn’t guarantee quality simply by association but, though some of his stuff drifts wide of the target, the breadth of musical imagination displayed here, such as the world-jazz of Burning Bush, shows that, when he gets it spot-on, Falcone really makes great use of his assembled talent.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Voiceprint | VP 489 CD

Reviewed by Ian Abrahams
<< Back to Issue 367

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