Pennsylvania's SOKO are multi-instrumentalists Houston Ross and Michael Sokolowski who trade their wares in "soulful jazz fusion". Obviously not the fastest off the recording blocks 'Two' is the follow-up album to their debut 'In November Sunlight' released 8 years ago.
Predominantly instrumental and pedestrian in pace 'Two' struggles to gain any momentum or display any music that is even mildly diverting, although completists and the irascibly curious may bravely seek out their 9 minute version of Lennon & McCartney's "B-side of all B-side's" 'Rain'.
The album is irredeemably bland despite its pleasant overtones of piano and percussion. The infusion of rhythms from world music does little to alleviate the plodding pace and a reliance on an ambient atmosphere that is overriding in its saccharine tone where it should be enlightening and becalming.
Despite its musical failings the inclusion of new age style verbal outpourings on 'The Matter of Coping' is the album's greatest crime. Ross possesses a voice that sounds like Nina Simone on Valium as impersonated by a drunken pub singer in search of a karaoke playing "24 Hours From Tulsa". As this voice relates the words "the joy of love is serving it and finding the true level of love…" I wince at the airy-fairy hippy musings on display but I'm quickly put in mind of an altogether less innocent and rather more unpleasant graphical image of love when he follows this up with "….we have only penetrated the crust but we must find the core". Yuck.
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Tracks like 'Speak Up' and 'Bamboo Cool' sound like the end of school year efforts of a group of 10 year olds let loose in the percussion section of the music room while 'Joy of Love' clocks in at 16 minutes but may in fact have broken all known laws of physics by being the first piece of music that is interminable in length.
Not a 'classic' then.
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