Magnolia Thunderpussy

Reviews:

Nightmares on Wax has this way of making anyone who's stuck around in thedance music game for the long haul feel very, very old. Of course, one can timethe years on Jupiter to the rather slow frequency of George Evelyn's recordedoutput (Mind Elevation is only album four in a decade-long career). Buteven beyond that, Evelyn also holds onto his trademark stoned downtempo styleso doggedly, one can almost imagine him getting set in his old ways. Now thatMind Elevation has dropped, one can only expect so much progress fromthe man, and at least hope there's a few chilled-out downtempo goodieson a par with NoW's high-water mark, 1995's Smoker's Delight.But sadly enough, we really don't even get that, and have to tolerate afew so-so attempts to win over the American R&B/hip-hop heads on top ofthis. So it's hard to say who will really like this album as a result.

Like one too many British post-rave producers who worships the black AmericanR&B/hip-hop kingpins, Evelyn would probably fall down dead if, say, theRZA or Timbaland were to ever give him props. And indeed, all that preventsan American R&B audience from accepting something like "Know My Name"is the detestable isolationism that separates international music markets inthis day and age. Still, taken on its own merits, Mind Elevation soundsas if Evelyn has grown very complacent, with slight rhythm tracks like "Mirrorball"and "Mind Eye" containing none of the grandeur that made NoW so well-lovedin the first place. So who knows where Evelyn will be four years after thisLP is forgotten? From the sounds of it, maybe the pasture.