Rashaya & Resistance Cruisers

Matt Weston’s album Rashaya is a fantastic piece of modern art. It is unique in that it is not a standard drum performance one would find at a symphony or pop music concert. Listening to Weston’s music is a different experience in and of itself; there is a variation in the sounds that is reminiscent of the Broadway show Stomp. The tracks have a surprising amount of expressive emotion produced from the unique instruments. Listening closely, there is an underlying accompaniment of sounds that are unusual, but add positively to the piece at large, even though you can’t quite put a finger on what instrument it is. Just when you think he is going one way with the rhythm the song goes in a whole other direction.

This album is not for the novice music listener. I recommend this for those who have a love of percussion-based music. Also I recommend it for those people, like myself, who enjoy having a little bit of everything in their musical library.

I was disappointed not to hear as much percussion on Matt Weston’s album Resistance Cruisers. It is more cacophonous electric noise than interesting and expressive percussion. The first track “It’s your Career” is the only likeable piece on the album. This piece finds balance in the mix of unique percussion with noise, which is tolerable, but becomes tedious by the end of the piece. Perhaps it is the guitarist in me, but the electric solos on this album sound like serious damage is being done to an electric guitar. During the track “Rose is the Color of my Envy,” I wanted to cry. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Experimentation with music is good - that’s what I liked about Weston’s album Rashaya. However, the Resistance Cruisers experiment failed. This album crossed the line from edgy and new to obnoxious.

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