Charity Empressa

An ethereal, ghost-like album with a dense mist of synth sweeps, vestiges of guitar strumming and echoing trumpet notes that lean in a gentler, mellifluous direction. The mostly instrumental music is akin to Brian Eno's own instrumental works, but ones that have been glazed with treatments and processing. Some songs on Charity Empressa have vocals, such as "Future King of England," "Cool as Cranes" and "The Kool Kids and Rock and Roll," where the voices come off as ambient instruments. An interesting track on this CD is "Shake Your Money Maker," a non-ambient song that adds rhythms to vocals by the Albert Francis Trio, circa 1939, in a folk style straight out of the movie O Brother Where Art Thou. There is a strong Christian theological influence in this music as well, as depicted in the liner notes and some of the lyrics, but not rendered in an abrasive, Bible-thumping manner.