Songs from the Silk Road

Tony Marks has recorded under the name Banco de Gaia since 1989, and can plausibly lay claim to being one of the pioneers of worldbeat electronica. Though he comes from the house music tradition (and still often has recourse to the thumping four-on-the-floor rhythmic verities of that genre), his style is sonically expansive and musically catholic, not to say downright promiscuous: to cue up a Banco de Gaia track is to be launched on a musical voyage that may well take you down a Moroccan cobblestone street during the call to prayer, then into a Trench Town reggae studio in Jamaica, then into a flamenco bar, then down a Chinese back alley where an itinerant erhu player sits on a crate playing for change. At his best (the sharply funky "Not in My Name," the gorgeously jungly "Glove Puppet [Dreadzone Remix]"), Marks blends all of these disparate influences with a subtle sense of balance and symmetry, creating music simultaneously funky and elegant. When he's not at his best, things can get just a bit tedious: the live "Last Train to Lhasa" is over 12 minutes of way too little musical content, and the melismatic vocals and quiet funkiness of "Farewell Ferengistan" are pleasant without ever generating much interest. But nothing on this retrospective collection is less than pleasant, and much of it is exceptionally fine.