Big Men Cry
Banco De Gaia
(Disko Gecko)
Reported Wednesday, February 12 2003
Courtesy of Jonty_Adderley @ www.skrufff.com
?Big Men Cry was a less obvious album and while it?s still one of my favourite Banco albums it wasn?t as accessible to a mainstream and club orientated audience. I always thought of it as being more thought provoking and emotional which to be fair a lot of dance music isn?t. Lot?s of people don?t want that kind of music either. A lot of critics didn?t like it, either.?
Speaking to Skrufff last April, just before his 10 Years compilation CD came out, Toby Marks (aka Banco De Gaia) was presumably contemplating the same critical ignorance that had always previously accompanied his presumably too original downtempo music. In fact, five years after record company problems conspired with bitter scribes to push him towards apparent oblivion, they appeared to catch up, greeting his (superb) retrospective compilation like a long lost friend. Big Men Cry, similarly vilified when it first appeared, looks likely to gain the same long overdue revision, merging tribal rhythms, dub beats, church bells and sax bits from legendary Pink Floyd saxophonists.
Standout track is undoubtedly Banco?s epic Eastern tinged dub anthem Celestine, flavoured with church bells, lush keyboards and a chorus of sax lines, many laid down by Dick Parry (who contributed to Pink Floyd?s masterpiece Dark Side Of The Moon). Title track Big Men Cry is similarly dark, evoking landscapes, lost souls and the haunting echo of the East.
Melancholic, moody and maybe even tearful, Big Men Cry is certainly an album for lighting up lonely nights after the love has gone, but with the world facing chaos, ruin and World War 3, its sentiment appears to be (finally and sadly) very much of its time.
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