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Monkey Dragon
Enter the Multiverse
Sonicturtle - 2021
Michael Panontin
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Truthfully, for such a consciously multicultural place, Canada outside the Montreal area has been strangely slow to latch on to world music, or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days. If not for Radio-Canada's Ici Musique and its tentacular reach across the nation, much of Canada would be stuck with the pasty white playlists of this country's English-language radio stations.
So it comes as a bit of a surprise that Monkey Dragon and their genre-bending mix of soul, funk, cumbia and dub originate from the faraway shores of British Columbia. The duo of Adham Shaikh and Buckman Coe, the nucleus of Monkey Dragon, sport resumes as rich and varied as the music they play, with the former an Emmy and Juno-nominated composer with twenty-five years under his belt and the latter a seasoned performer on the international festival circuit.
Enter the Multiverse, their debut long-player, is if nothing else a defiant show of optimism in the face of today's decidedly gloomy skies, from the the sunny colours on its cover to the tropical vibes contained within. In fact, one has to wonder how the group, who bill themselves as essentially live performers, could release an album with little hope of promoting it in concert in 2021.
That positivity is perhaps no more evident than on the leadoff track, 'No Time to Run', the record's top tune and the most obvious choice for a radio single. It's a languorous, but catchy, melding of cumbia with meandering sax and spaghetti-western whistling that ought to - here's hoping - grace a few outdoor patios this coming summer. Other tracks, like the horn-infused 'Funk 2 Power' and the closing 'Get It Together', hint at the sort of energy the band could bring to a packed and sweat-filled live music venue.
Though it occasionally suffers from the usual trappings of worldbeat - a missing spark here and there and the odd lapse of imaginative production - Enter the Multiverse is definitely a welcome addition to the Canuckistani international collection.
(Enter the Multiverse was pressed up on 12" vinyl in a very limited run of 200 copies, so you'd better get on it if you want a copy.)
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