Artist Info:Discography Album length: 8 tracks: 38 minutes, 07 seconds Street Date: February 15, 2005
David Crowder made quite an impact in 2003 with his groundbreaking project
Illuminate. While his band's debut album was noteworthy, it was this second effort that
really began to catch substantial attention. What's unique about Crowder and his band is that
they don't simply stick with generic worship songs, they branch out to create an experience
different from any other worship band today.
This has never been truer than on the band's latest project, Sunsets & Sushi. This
disc basically has eight songs from Illuminate completely remixed with all sorts of
interesting titles (i.e. "Pneumatic Mix" and "Antidromic Mix"). Most of the songs sound like they
belong on a dance mix rather than a worship album, but that's not necessarily bad. The thing that
hurts this album most is that many of the songs don't turn out as well in reality as they might
have in theory. While "Intoxicating" works exceptionally well and has a very catchy bass beat,
songs like "O Praise Him" and "Open Skies" simply don't seem to fit the techno sound they've been
given.
Another thing that makes this disc lose some of its appeal is the fact that these are all
songs from Illuminate, which came out in 2003, before Crowder's Lime CD was
released. While Lime was a fairly well-timed live project, none of its songs were from
Illuminate, (excluding a bonus demo at the end of the CD; I won't count that) and it lost a bit of its appeal due to that fact. Consequently, the timing
of all of these releases seems a bit off. Had Lime been released before Illuminate,
with Sunsets & Sushi next in line, the order would have made more sense. At this point,
with the project having no new material and containing songs released a year and a half ago,
Sunsets is a valiant effort, but nothing brilliant.
Ironically, the subtitle of this project is Experiments in Spectral Deconstruction, and really,
that's exactly what the CD is: an experiment. With a few high points, it's hard to call the
experiment a failure, but it's hardly a scientific breakthrough.
- Review date: 2/13/05, written by Spencer Priest
Artist Info:Discography Record Label:sixstepsrecords Album length: 8 tracks, 38 minutes and 7 seconds
Street Date: February 15, 2005
Artist Info: 
