Daniel Givens

While I would have been much happier without the spoken word appearances on "Allies," "No Visible Color" and "Never Worship Earth," which all sounded forced and detracted from the instrumentals they were spoken over, the debut album from Chicago's Daniel Givens is a nice work of fusion soul. Sometimes I was reminded of Granelli, sometime of MC 900 Ft Jesus and sometimes Daniel Givens reminded me of no one. But throughout it all is an odd undertone due in large part to Givens's abstract beat composition, which finds him combining some strange samples and live instruments in very off-kilter ways, such as the violin and stuttered drum play of "Transistional" or the varied strings on "Petals." What makes Age a great album, though, is the absolute life Daniel Givens has injected into nearly every song, along with plenty of flow and motion. Each song is scenic in how it captures your imagination, playing out scenarios in your head. I see a great future for Daniel Givens as a film soundtrack composer, creating electronic music that contains more emotional honesty than any dozen traditional film scores. While this may not be electronic music to dance to, Age is most definitely a great album to get warped to. But, only for the daring!