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THE DEVOURING
Written by Greger Rönnqvist

Djam Karet was founded in 1984 and they are playing guitar dominated all-instrumental progressive rock. They are mixing elements from New Age, Heavy Metal, Ambient, Eastern- and Electronic Music, and have created a unique sound that is hard to compare to any other band. You can hear some King Crimson, Ozric Tentacles and influences from the classic bands such as Genesis and Pink Floyd.

The complexity of Djam Karet is similar to King Crimson, and they have received great reviews in big magazines such as Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, Bass Player, Keyboard, CD Review and Electronic Musician. They are excellent musicians and besides a numerous of releases with Djam Karet, they've also done soundtracks for Television, Motion Pictures and TV-commercials. Although their music isn't easy listening, they have been played a lot by Radio stations, and that is fairly unusual in this genre. Besides Canada, they have fans in Brazil, Australia and the former Soviet Union among others.

Their music is sometimes emotionally dark and quiet with floating keyboards, and sometimes heavy, exquisite and aggressive rock with pulsating rhythms. They are mixing electric instruments with acoustic ones, and they have a great sense for good and melodic music. "The Devouring" contains 10 songs that varies in length between 4:19 to 11:04. You can't find any 3-minutes hit songs.

This is their first album that isn't released on their own label. Besides two electric guitars, bass and drums, there's instruments such as Mellotron, Koto, Theremin and African drums, together with modern instruments such as samplers, guitar Synth and E Bow.

In my opinion, this is one of the best albums to come out in 1997, with the exception of 2-3 songs. But considering that this is an all-instrumental album, this is a good rating. This CD makes me want to hear more of Djam Karet. Recommended!

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