DELICATE FLAME OF DESIRE

For all the beauty of its singers and folk inspired melodies, Karnataka has a thick sound that wears thin before the halfway point of the CD. Overproduced and over-arranged to the point where every pure element is compressed into something grotesque, "Delicate Flame of Desire" collapses under its own obesity. The group has studied with the masters, be they Renaissance, Barclay James Harvest, Clannad, or Mostly Autumn, but they have failed to reference some of the high end characteristics of those bands - subtlety, variety and, yes, delicacy. Every part of the mix is jacked up all the time to the point where nothing can really be appreciated on its own, like a choir with everyone beautifully singing solo all the time, and not necessarily the same song. Nonetheless, "Time Stands Still", the title track, and "After the Rain" all sound just great, but they ultimately rushed this listener into a burnout that could only be cured by differentiated instrumentation and production, hence I turned to my copy of Renaissance "Turn of the Cards" or even Clannad's relative misstep "Sirius" in haste, lack of delicacy having extinguished my flame of desire cold.