Without Within

Bob Holroyd's mix of world music exotica and digital electronica was not unique when he began recording a decade ago, and at the beginning of the 21st century it is even less so. But it doesn't have to be original to be compelling, and while Holroyd does flirt just a bit too heavily with a sort of soggy, multi-culti easy listening mood, the best moments on Without Within are both fun and musically substantive. "Looking Back" nicely juxtaposes the chants of a Kalahari bushman with Afro-Brazilian percussion and synthesized handclaps; the title track is a sort of ambient trip-hop affair with muted trumpet and piano, and ends up sounding like a felicitous cross between smooth jazz and downtempo electronica; "When the Rains Came" ends the album with a bracingly funky mixture of horns, percussion, and polyphonic vocal harmonies. His cover of Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" is less successful, mainly because it stays relatively faithful to the original version and brings little new musical insight to bear on it. And a couple of other tracks, notably the sprawling and uneventful "Dreams of Olduvai" and the even more sprawling and less eventful "At the Waters Edge" sound a bit like filler. Overall, though, this album is well worth hearing.