Artist: BANCO DE GAIA
Title: Songs From The Silk Road
Label: DISCO GECKO
Release date: out
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Text by FlipSwitch, LLC and Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Persian strings and prog rock. Tibetan songs and ecstatiewic house. Welcome to the strange, wonderful world of DJ/remixer/dance music maestro Banco de Gaia (aka Toby Marks) whose work sprang from the hopeful exuberance of British house, the joys of sampling, and the advent of global music. Now, new listeners unfamiliar with this funky founding father of eclectic electronica can savor nearly two decades of hits, rarities, and remixes on Songs From the Silk Road (Disco Gecko). An intro to the vibrant cross-pollination of house and world music, tracks shift from hard-hitting to playful, pulsing to ambient, all guided by a strong, omnivorous ear for powerful beats and delicate filigrees of sound.

Pensive modal harmonies (“Farewell Ferengistan”—named for an obscure Central Asian term for Europeans) alternate with hand drum-heavy dub grooves (“Amber”). Gentle digital pops and glitches (“Big Men Cry”) give way to driving rhythms, stirring vocals, and glittering keyboards (“Last Train to Lhasa”).

Here is a video of “Last Train to Lhasa” which was deemed unsuitable for daytime broadcasting due to violent scenes which happened in Tibet. Because of this, you’ll probably never get to see it, so here’s the footage which shocked the censors.

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