Artist: BRYAN FERRY
Album: MAMOUNA REMASTERED (CD)

Year: 1994/ 1999
Media type: CD

All tracks have been digitally re-mastered using HDCD technology.

From his earliest days fronting Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry perfected a coy kind of R&B-based music with a techno-progressive overlay of synthesizers and post-industrial guitar ... Full Descriptionthrash, even as his sly, dry martini vocals and fey lounge lizard poses defined a new style of urban chic.

But with MAMOUNA, Ferry has fashioned an ambiguous, seductive, unsettling soundscape in which the old lounge lizard is now seen as a rootless romantic searching for anything to hang on to, or the nearest exit--but as the menacing "Wildcat Days" suggests, there's "no way out."

Ferry's songs personify longing, denial and spiritual ambivalence, but what makes MAMOUNA so special is its atmospheric mix of guitars and keyboards, its taut, spatial selection of laid back dance grooves. Adding to the power of his funk are a who's who of top rock and R&B musicians, including guitarist Nile Rodgers, James Brown/P-Funk alumni Maceo Parker and ex-Roxy Music collaborators Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Brian Eno. The return of Eno has a profound effect on Ferry's music, as his moody sound processing lends an Oriental ambience to each arrangement, to particular effect on the title tune, with its mystic pan-Arabic airs, and the suave, mysterious "N.Y.C." Ferry makes the most of these hypnotic grooves on the seductive, bluesy "Gemini Moon," the R&B foreplay of "Chain Reaction," and the decadent "Your Painted Smile."

Recorded at Utopia, Olympic and Master Rock Studios, London, England.

TRACKLIST:

1. Don't Want to Know
2. N.Y.C.
3. Your Painted Smile
4. Mamouna
5. Only Face, The
6. 39 Steps, The
7. Which Way to Turn
8. Wildcat Days
9. Gemini Moon
10. Chain Reaction

LINE-UP:

Bryan Ferry (vocals, strings, piano, keyboards, synthesizer); David Williams (guitar, background vocals); Phil Manzanera, Neil Hubbard, Chester Kamen, Jeff Thall, Nile Rogers, Robin Trower (guitar); Maceo Parker, Mike Paice, Andy MacKay (alto saxophone); Guy Fletcher (synthesizer); Nathan East, Pino Palladino, Guy Pratt (bass); Steve Ferrone (drums); Luke Cresswell, Luis Jardim, Steve Scales (percussion); Richard T. Norris (programming, loops); Rhett Davies (programming); Carleen Anderson, Jhelisa, Fonzi Thornton, Yannick Etienne, Paul Johnson (background vocals); Brian Eno, Nan Kidwell, Neil Jason