Reviewed by
Kim Alexander
Released
1998
Label
Contact
RGB
Visit
MOX
RGB Site
Contact Mox
via
Tilt Records
Mox Management
Roger Clark
Visual Music Company
San Francisco, CA
Email Visual Music Co.
Last Edit/Update
12 April, 1998
Mox
Mox
Track Listing
1. Dr. Bombay
2. Bubble
3.Wig
4. Blind
5. Fez
6. Fin
7. Orange
8. Sprocket
9. Dome
10. Loop
11. Twirl
12. Fetish
RGB Records has done it again in
releasing the excellent music of Mox. A fabulous CD!
Ambient textures, lots of percussion, and culturally rich vocals, but with the superb
addition of rich acoustic-organics and machine based electro-sampling -- ranging from the
fullness of the guitars and drumming to the more mature work of their keyboard wizardry --
spacious drifting sonics, smooth flowing harmonies and world beats/vocals that create a
listening delight that will make you hit replay time and time again...! (I think I
am on the fifth replay today!)
And no wonder why this music is so
creative -- the fine artists that comprise Mox
are as follows:
Michael Boyd - guitars &
machines
Charles Judge - keyboards & machines
Hector Perez - percussion & machines
Having a rich background in music and composition with such endeavours as creating
soundtracks for international television, music for designers in the world of fashion with
video soundtracks for Ralph Loren and Calvin Klein, MOX
spans a wide variety of sound creation with their talent. Having their roots in the San
Francisco area, a place of rich cultural diversity, Mox blends their
expertise in (experimental) instrumental pop music in their studio/salon of Mergatroid
Recorders, located in "San Francisco at the base of romantic Telegraph Hill -- the
mystery of Chinatown and the Italian passion of North Beach with its beatnik history,
mixes with the nightclub district and the pulse of Montgomery Street's Pacific Rim
Financial Center."
-- Press data
This new release represents the
best of their current recordings; it's a compilation assembled from the three MOX
CDs issued on their own TILT Records ("Unsung", "Seconds", and
"Goo Roo").
The CD begins with exotic vocals
curiously blended with a steady beat and a soft full (wavey) reverberating guitar that
reminds me of the guitars in the film: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. But that's
not all -- there are the sonics of synths, other exotic strings and keyboards smoothing
and filling the piece of work to a complete and rich sound, in the opening track: Dr.
Bombay. I have to say that when I heard some of the later work by Delerium,
I thought I had heard the "best" in ethnic beats, and vocals mixed up with
expansive electronica, but hey, Mox is MUCH BETTER in a tad different
more organic direction in the genres and sounds involved here! (Sorry Bill...). What
I am saying is -- if you liked Karma, you will really enjoy Mox!
There are many uplifting moments of
indiginous female (African?) vocals on many of the tracks, of course excellent chords and
rhythms from a (real acoustic) guitar, which adds SO MUCH to this music...Mox brings
back my faith in the use of guitar (Michael Boyd!) in electronic music;
what sounds like a bagpipe but not quite, chimes, noises, organ, clanks, conga's, swishey
and curvey synths, and much more, all or most of which I think are machine based creations
of sound by the men of Mox. I have never before heard this type of
integration of drums and guitar with machines. This release is definately a sweet surprise
to me, one that won't gather dust on my shelf!
Buy this CD NOW as I believe you
too will enjoy it for hours on end if you groove to the sounds of world, acoustic, pop and
electronica rolled up into a delicious serving of auditory delight!
Photo by
Christine Uomini