Castle Of Crime

When the words ‘drummer’ and ‘solo project’ are mentioned in the same sentence, it’s usually time to cut and run to the hills, leaving all your worldly possessions behind except for a pair of ear muffs and a box of cyanide tablets.

But here’s one it’s safe to listen to between meals. The drummer is question is David Narcizo, longtime member of Throwing Muses and in Castle Of Crime he’s produced a low-key work that sounds like a soundtrack to the most multi-cultural millennium party in town.

Although mostly instrumental, with the booming kick-drum and ethereal keyboards to the fore, the opening track, ‘Lemongrass’ features the eerie wailing of a born again Bombay banshee while ‘Vega’ is what The Good, The Bad And The Ugly would have sounded like had it been set in Bristol, its spaghetti western twang striking up an unlikely partnership with Portishead’s West Country trip-hoppery.

The exotic eastern ambience of ‘On The Floor’ is offset by the earthy, booming drum patterns; and the closing ‘The Very Next Day’ has the sort of soft, wispy ambience one has come to expect from advertisements for Stag.

Also helping to create these widescreen trippy atmospherics are Narcizo’s erstwhile Throwing Muses cohorts Hersh and Bernard Georges, as well as Belly’s Tom Gorman.

But one thing’s for sure: there’s not an octopus’s garden in sight.