The Afro Celt Sound System: Volume 3: Further In Time : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If you're looking for a living definition of the slippery term "world beat," Afro Celt Sound System is at your service. The U.K.-based multicultural collective has been merging sounds from around the globe with posterior-motivating beats for nearly a decade, garnering kudos from all but the most rigid traditionalists. Principal selling points of this newest release are cameos by simpatico rock legends Peter Gabriel and Robert Plant, both of whom gamely croon in their respective trademark styles over custom-designed sonic backdrops (vaguely South African for Gabriel's "When You're Falling," vaguely Moroccan for Plant's "Life Begin Again"). But the Afro Celts' own distinctive genre mash remains, rightly, the center of attention here. Piling bouzoukis, dhol drums, and uilleann pipes on top of one another can get a bit Frankensteinian, and one of the less ethnic cuts, "Persistence of Memory," sounds suspiciously like it could have been on a Celine Dion record. Yet when ACSS get the balance right -- as they do most of the time -- the results can be dazzling, particularly on tracks like "North 2" and "Colossus," where darting reel-like lines meet an unshakeable groove.

MAC RANDALL
(June 18, 2001)