Consumer Guide Album

Abed Azrié: Aromates [Elektra/Nonesuch, 1990]
A Paris-based Syrian sets poems to Arab psaltery, Arab flute, Arab percussion, and Arab-style synthesizer. They'll stop you short the minute they come on, but translations or no they background better than they foreground: at its grandest, the music's world-exotic aura is not without faint echoes of Vangelis. Because it's text-driven, however, it never accrues the emotional mass of true schlock. With a culture being devastated, heightened emotion seems not only permissible but just. A−