Track Listing

1. Endless Reverie
2. Spring Arrives
3. In Other Worlds
4. Abode
5. Forty One Ways
6. The Tryst
7. From Heaven To Dust
8. I Am A Stranger In This World
9. In This Divide

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74177 in Music
• Released on: 2006-07-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
"Elysium For The Brave", Azam's second solo album, signals a new turn in her musical evolution. The album, her most ambitious work to date, brings together musicians from varied musical backgrounds performing in diverse permutations. The result is a highly coherent body of work that seamlessly weaves together all of Azam's cultural and musical influences into a haunting tapestry of atmospheric rock, electronic, and global sounds. Singing predominantly in English for the first time, the songs are based on lyrics written by Azam herself and reveal a poetic lyricism heard only in glimpses in her previous work.

Amazon.com
For this, her second solo album, Azam Ali, lead vocalist of Vas and Niyaz, takes her patented polycultural blend of ancient and contemporary influences even farther beyond the stratosphere. That she is now a veteran of numerous film scores, including Children of Dune, Earthsea, and Matrix Revolutions, perhaps explains her present more cinematic direction. Born in Iran, reared in India and the US, and gifted with a voice of improbable tonal breadth, flexibility, and beauty, she is backed by collaborators like Trey Gunn (King Crimson), Chris Venna (Nine Inch Nails), Turkish DJ/composer Mercan Dede, the Japanese ensemble Kodo, and Grateful Dead drummer/world percussion enthusiast Mickey Hart. One of the more interesting conundrums inherent in Ali's work is that no matter how much electronic technology she employs, her immersion in her heritage unfailingly comes across loud and clear. Whether she is singing in English, which predominates on these sessions, Farsi, or another language, a prayerful sensuality informs every note. It's as though a sexy Tanagra temple figurine or silk-clad court lady from an antique parchment were to suddenly turn her lovely head and step daintily into the modern world, unfurling precisely the kind of voice one expected but never could have imagined. --Christina Roden

About the Artist
In a career which spans over a decade and includes eight collaborative and solo albums, Azam Ali has confirmed her place as one of the most prolific, versatile, and gifted singers in the world music scene today. Looking at her entire body of work, it is hard to deny Azam her rightful place among the best singers and composers in music today. Azam's immense talent and ability to adapt her voice to any musical style have drawn the attention of many diverse artists and film composers. Azam collaborated in the studio and on stage with numerous artists like Serj Tankian of System of a Down, the Crystal Method, Pat Mastellato and Trey Gunn of King Crimson, Dredg, Chris Vrenna formerly of Nine Inch Nails, Ben Watkins of Juno Reactor, Buckethead, Steve Stevens, film composer Tyler Bates, Mercan Dede, the world renowned Japanese group Kodo, Zakir Hussain, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and Mickey Hart with whom she also toured for two years as lead singer in his group Bembe Orisha. Her latest band Niyaz with Loga Ramin Torkian of Axion of Choice, and two time Grammy nominee producer/re-mixer Carmen Rizzo, released on Six Degrees Records, blended ancient Persian and Urdu Sufi poetry, rich acoustic instrumentation, and modern electronics. It has been hailed by critics worldwide as one of the most groundbreaking of its time; The album debuted at #1 on itunes World music chart and remained there for numerous weeks and charted on Billboard's World music chart for four consecutive weeks, peaking at #12. Niyaz also entered in at #76 as the only Iranian group to make it into the top 150 of the best alubums of 2005 on WMCE (World Music Charts Europe)

Customer Reviews

Enveloping beauty of an album
Azam doesn't take long to make a definitive statement on this album - the very first track is a beauty, a darkly shimmering, goosebump-inducing song featuring her signature vocals over a mixture of ethnic percussion and synthesizers (incidentally, this track also features King Crimson's Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto). Whereas the formula of mixing electronics with world music influences has gone so wrong in so many hands, here it shines, showing that it's an approach that only works when the influences are mixed naturally, not forced into an uncomfortable or superficial coexistance. Azam seems to have developed her own place in this genre-crossing terrain, rather than producing derivative work.

The album continues from there, showing the familiar facets of Azam from Vas and Niyaz, further maturing and evolving. "In Other Worlds" is another highlight, with a tasteful touch of trip-hop underlying the vocals. Indeed, this is indicative of the whole album - a certain element of minimalism allows the songs to breathe instead of burying them with unnecessary distractions. That said, there is quite a lot happening beneath the surface (as a quick glance at the list of contributing musicians would suggest), never boring the attentive listener. A work of beauty that demands more than just a single listening.

An erotic and mystical muse
Azam Ali, "Elysium for the Brave."

Azam Ali, vocalist of Vas and Niyaz, has always been a closet goth. Her wordless vocals tended toward the minor key. In her first English language album, she brings out the black nail polish with her dark, contemplative lyrics about war and unrequited love. The music she and her cohorts construct are dark ambient techno pieces liberally accented with the Persian and Indian music that she developed in both her other projects. Danceable rhythms sinuously percolate, while exotic instruments play against a tapestry of delayed guitar effects and swirling keyboards. The sorrowful chord progressions wouldn't sound out of place on a Siouxsie or Robert Smith album, and the compositions - courtesy of such collaborators as Axiom of Choice's Loga Ramin Terkian and Niyaz's Carmen Rizzo - meld traditional and electronic instrumentation seamlessly. The ace in the hole, of course, is Ali's beautiful, rich voice. She turns English into alien language, twisting vowels into odd and magical shapes. In the past, she's sounded like Lisa Gerrard here, or Sheila Chandra there. On this album, Ali sounds like herself. Erotic, mysterious and melancholy, it's not too early to call this the ethereal album of the year.

Musical Elysium
Well, Azam Ali's voice is every bit as rich and beautiful as the first time I heard it, on "Sunyata" when she was with Vas, but her music has become much more multilayered, complex, and satisfying. She reveals strong songwriting talent here in "Elysium for the Brave" with haunting, sophisticated lyrics of inner conflict and struggle--informed with a passionate (yet ambiguous) spark of transcendence alloyed with a refined sensuality. This was new, at least to me. Then, and a real strong point for me as far as this album goes, she integrates the sounds of contemporary electronica with the musical idioms of several different cultural traditions here in successfully subtle and compelling ways--never sounding fake or tacked on. Best of all, the vocals and the instrumentals, fine in and of themselves, function well in tandem, neither overshadowing the other and neither going off on its own tangent. I wasn't sure if I'd really like this CD or not, but it turned out to be a fine album that grows on you with each listening.