LIVE AT ORION

Releasing a double album is always a risk, being that sometimes you have to add some fillers to make the time required for such large enterprise, fillers that lower the overall quality of the album and rest merits from the great songs, but a live double disk is also an opportunity to demonstrate real versatility, being that you are not limited by the studio engineers and the capacity of a disk, allowing the band to add some features that don't appear in the original records.

Despite this is not the case of Live at Orion because all the tracks are superb in quality, the first album seems to lose that naive folksy sound from the original releases, probably because an American audience want to listen more traditional arrangements. The Kendang percussion ceases to be the center of the Indonesian style to be more an enhancement for traditional virtuoso performances by Tohpati and Riza Arshad.

But this is good, because it demonstrates the ability of the band to adapt themselves to the circumstances and shows a great degree of versatility that few bands can't achieve. Even when I already commented most of the tracks in their original studio environment, I appreciated some of the new arrangements, especially in tracks as Throwing Words in which the band tries to keep the original atmosphere but manage to create a more sober sound ideal for a public performance, and the solid bass provided by Rudy Zulkarnaen is simply impressive.

Another track that impressed me is the extended version of For Once and Ever, which allows Riza and Tohpati to create some magical moments with the Fender Rhodes and guitar, even more impressive than the studio version.

Also Lain Parantina and the sober arrangements plus the vibrant keyboard solos (that remind me of Chick Corea) show a great degree of virtuosity and adaptation capability for a band playing in front of people from another country.

In Disk 2 the guys of DIMAK DIALOG take more risks and are rewarded by the obvious excitement of the audience.

I always said that we discover the music in the studio albums, but can only find the real capacity of the musicians when they play outside of their comfort zone and in an uncontrolled environment where you don't have a second take to repair a false note or a mistake, and SIMAK DIALOG passed the test with excellent grade?Four solid stars in my opinion.

Indonesian band SIMAKDIALOG has been a going entity for more than 20 years, and ever since 1995 they have steadily released new music. A grand total of five studio productions and 2 live albums carry their name so far, and the most recent of these is the double feature "Live at Orion", released through Moonjune Records in early 2015.

A tight and elegant harmonic performance is what SimakDialog delivers on their live album "Live at Orion", with a good balance between tightly controlled performances and material that has room for a more loose and expressive delivery. All instrumentalists are in good form, and the recording quality doesn't leave anything to be desired either. A strong live double feature, one that should be of interest to existing fans first and foremost, I guess, and apart from them I'd estimate that those who find music described as instrumental jazz rock or fusion with a distinct world music touch to it to be of interest should find this double CD to be a rewarding listen.

Recorded live on September 7, 2013, at The Orion, Baltimore, MD, this was to be the final release for simakDialog. Looking back to their previous live album from 2005, Ravid, Tohpati and Endang were still there, with bassist Rudy Zulkarnaen and additional percussionists in Erlan Suwardana and Cucu Kurnia. This release is a double CD, and again none of the songs are less than eleven minutes in length, and the band are determined to stretch their wings. "Throwing Words" is very different in the live environment to when it was released some ten plus years earlier, with Tohpati demanding centre stage and taking firm control. The band had been together for twenty years by this point, and the way that Tohpati and Ravid swap roles and bounce off each other in superb.

Here is a band where everyone is a master of their instrument and knows exactly where each of them needs to be musically, but the coming together of Western and Indonesian styles and sounds allows them to sound both incredibly tight and loose at the same time. Just listen to the combined runs of Tohpati and Ravid at the beginning of "Stepping In" to see what I mean, as while they are hitting each note in perfect unison at great speed, the percussionists are creating a sound storm beneath them. This album is a perfect introduction to a great band, who never really gained the kudos they deserved outside their native country. Discover this, and then go back and listen to their other releases to see why I am such a fan.