Around the World (05)

Hello again. Around the world, you can say as much from the musicians that make up Ekova and yet they found eachother in Paris to make music together. Echoes of This Mortal Coil without the pathos comes to mind. I posted the abstract remix version of "Heaven's Dust" , "Soft Breeze & Tsunami Breaks" at my Ici Paris II post 22th of december last year. So now i treat you to the warm exuberant and dreamy side of the original, truly a great album, which in hindsight turned out to be too difficult to surpass.

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Ekova - Heaven's Dust (98 ^ 99mb)

"I think Paris is the most extraordinary city. I mean, every culture has its own history but what's really amazing about Paris is that you get to see living cultures - some of them thousands of years old - existing side by side and influencing one another. I love the idea of this process of mixing and exchange going on right under our noses. And I think it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for Paris, Ekova might never have existed at all!"-Dierdre Dubois

This Paris-based trio - which doesn't contain a single Frenchman, draws its name from a word coined by American-born singer Dierdre Dubois, echo and ova, signifying the feminine side. Dubois, despite her Celtic and French name, was raised by her Italian-American mother in Northern California, and has lived in Paris long enough that her English is noticeably accented. Like the name of the band Dierdre creates words as sounds, she creates her own improvised language, a kind of multicultural glossolalia that is as mysterious as it is musical. "I don't understand it all myself," she acknowledges. "It just comes out by itself. But I like that sense of mystery about it." The other two members of Ekova, Iranian percussionist Arach Khalatbari and Algerian guitar/lute player Mehdi Haddab, have invented a musical language to match. Khalatbari is from Tehran but has lived and worked in Paris since the Islamic revolution in Iran. And Haddab is half Algerian, half French; born in Algiers, he lived in Burundi in Central Africa before finally making his way to Paris. Freed from the weight of any of their individual traditions, Khalatbari and Haddab weave together strands of Celtic and African music, inspired by many of the world's music traditions without literally drawing on them, Ekova has created a sound that is at once elusive but familiar.

With their debut album "Heavens Dust" they released a classic, that deserved more attention than it got, even though many were raving about it. ( politically incorrect lined-up perhaps ?). Happy to experiment and fuse further Ekova offered their album up for remix, the result "Soft Breeze and Tsunami Breaks" was released one year later, it was a bold choice as these electronica remixes wouldnt perse suit their first fans.
In 2001 Ekova released "Space Lullabies and Other Fantasmagore" , they went on some extensive touring but to date haven't released any new material.



01 - Starlight In Daden (5:34)
02 - Chant Of Diem (1:02)
03 - Todosim (3:46)
04 - Temoine (5:53)
05 - Ditama (2:33)
06 - Sebrendita (3:48)
07 - Sabura (4:43)
08 - La Nef Des Fous (2:43)
09 - Sister (3:09)
10 - In My Prime (3:36)
11 - Taksim (3:18)
12 - Helas And Reason (4:24)
13 - Venus And One (4:39)
14 - Untitled (4:57)

Ekova @ Label

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !