Oh and maybe maybe it was the fat statue of Hotei the laughing Buddha
laughing in my basement that set it off or it could have been the cheese
curls or maybe it was the kif but somewhere somewhere between then- the then
being the old review of the old album Big Men Cry and the now of writing a
review for The Magical Sounds Of Banco De Gaia, Toby marks- you know Toby,
don't you? Toby went from soundtracking my walk through Wal-Mart, to
orchestrating my synapses. I had this velvet poster and a blacklight and I
touched it and it was like . . . wow. And Toby was playing his thing, doing
his thing somewhere near the chillout vibe, dragging my brain around by its
stem (spinal chord) stem and slapping it into the corners with layers upon
layers (heavy layers) of percussion, chanting, lilting melodies, all
syncopating into weird textures like a fine Indian, a fine Sumatran dish,
the seasonings plugging me deeply into its . . . oneness.

And it didn't stop- no it didn't stop not today not now or ever, when I
heard it it plugged me back in and I heard the sound, I guess someone could
call it techno, Penetr8ting gaze man would surely call it techn-o, but it's
so organic, so natural and flowing, not ambient, not ambient at all, it's
got the beat- sure it sometimes drags it slow, other times it revvs up and
cruises, but the beat is there, not just a flow of mysterious frightening
notes meant to be the backdrop for something very slow and relaxed, no, it's
like that but not really. Better, really. Really, better.

And sometimes it makes me laugh, I hear the frogs singing and the
evangelists shouting for their souls and the rainforest birds calling, and I
don't know what it means that this song (and that) are plugged into my
rhythm, I just don't know, but it can't be bad- it's eclectic and dense,
filled with bits I'll never understand and bits I might not want to
understand, like the soft grey thing that rides around in my skull and makes
up most of what I think of as me. It can't be bad- Toby's just tuned in,
just operating at the right bandwidth, no, not bandwidth, he's in
geosynchronious orbit- two spheres circling one another, grokking off their
magnetism- acting and reacting, the rhythms, the chants, they fill my brain
fill full now.

I remember (yes!), I remember that last review and the letters I read about
it people wrote to me and said they liked it for the most part, and that was
nice, but maybe I missed the mark, maybe Toby was making something deeper
than I even knew, but the letters made me very happy and if you wrote one,
thank you now thank you then and thank you forever- good people. I speak
think to you now (know) that The Magical Sounds Of Banco De Gaia has a
little more juice to it, a little heavier in the beats, and I miss the sax.
I'm tuned in, don't get me wrong, but that sax on Big Men Cry turned that
album into something truly special, so I guess that's why I'm gonna give it
a little lower score. It's another great Banco album and it has reached me
as few electro albums can, so I think if you can dig it- you can dig it.