Tarana's 'A Fire Of Flowers Grows Around Us' on Wondermachine Music (REVIEW)

I could care less if you think this is jazz or not. Ravish Momin is the drummer/composer. His partner in this industrial mayhem and technologically twisted polyrhythmic zouk is trombone man Rick Parker. Parker has played with Tim Berne, Mingus Big Band and hip-hop's Wu Tang Clan. They take from Bollywood soundtracks, folk music from India, Arabic chants, 1980's synth-pop and low end bass 'n' drum trance to create flowing eight-track craziness. Now, Tarana's A Fire Of Flowers Grows Around Us is available on Wondermachine music.

Ready to run away yet? Don't be so hasty. The result of all of these widespread influences is an absorbing instrumental cacophony that reaches out and grabs your lapels to force you under. At first, you're like whoa! Then you're intrigued. Then you're hooked. I doubt there's another CD in my thousand-plus collection that sounds like this.

Momin has collaborated with Chicago's AACM collective of avant-gardists to pop star Shakira. He formed Tarana in 2003 after coming of age in such exotic locales as Mumbai and Bahrain. And he brings it all with him on this, his highly anticipated full-length Tarana debut. "Tehrah" and "Safar" sizzle with digitized beats. Other tracks are cinematic in scope, like a soundtrack to a mystery that doesn't exist.

If you had to put a spin on post-rock band Sigur Ros from Reykjavik, Iceland, Jamaican trombone player Vin Gordon (one of reggae's original rude boys) and the tragic Midwestern electronica pioneer DJ Rashad, it might wind up sounding just like Tarana does on A Fire Of Flowers Grows Around Us. Not that Tarana actually sounds like them. The point is; they sound like nobody. Still, elements of the aforementioned pop up like weeds between city sidewalks. It's alive. It throbs with static electricity. You can't stop listening to it. At least I couldn't.