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.