Ekko Centripetal CAN/UK Interchill Interchill, with headquarters in Montreal and London England, follow up last year's incredible Magnetic Blue compilation with an album from Ekko. Lead by Adham Shaikh, Centripetal is an incredible disc of audio bliss where organic blends with synthetic--from soothing atmospheric passages to delicious tabla workouts. Most striking about this release is the amount of care that has obviously gone into it. Notable first is the packaging, complete with detailed liner notes, but it's the music itself that matters most. Ekko initially came together in the spring of 1997 and impressed Interchill founder Andrew-Ross Collins so much that he knew they had to record an album. The musicians-A. Larouche (with his unique 37 string Stikharp), E. Shankar (who studied tabla for 3 years in India), Kenyon Fields (guitar, bass, and a plethora of percussion), and Shaikh (the "Gizmo Guru"; keyboards, sampling, and programming)-started by jamming and improvising for a week, then Shaikh spent many months thereafter honing the 18 hours of recorded material down to the length of a CD. The result is an essential release for anyone into ambient, dub, downtempo, world, or even experimental music. Also out now are Neil Sparkes And The Last Tribe's Burning Mask as well as EPs from Watershell (Jason Irwin) and Han (the ubiquitous Dan Handrabur) in Interchill's Dakini vinyl series. Andrew Duke Back to album/book reviews index