Description
Wally Badarou is a synth pioneer and musical polymath. But rarely does he sing over his sumptuous tracks. The six songs that comprise new record Simple Things finally realize Wally's vision for select backing tracks from his beloved Colors Of Silence. The tracks were originally developed back in 2001 for the release of the original CD; here, Wally has "simply" added overdubs and vocals to their mastered mixes with some discerning edits. Simply put, Simple Things is another slice of simply stunning Wally Badarou genius. Simple Things has been decades in the making. Indeed, Wally struggled not only with the idea of singing these wonderful songs himself but singing them in English and writing his own lyrics, while wrestling with the sensational backing tracks, which themselves seemed to have taken on a life of their own. As Wally explains: "In addition to the instrumental artist I have been known as, so far, there has always been a singer who simply was not sure he was, up until now. Even though Back To Scales Tonight, my very first album, was, indeed, a song album." The guide vocal Wally had laid for Colors Of Silence -- with an organ sound -- seemed striving for words in Linguala, a Congolese language he could not speak. Therefore the decision to do it himself was not an easy one, for it had to be in English to fit his singing. A synth specialist, there can be few artists more under-appreciated given their vast influence than Wally Badarou. His solo work practically defined the sound of the Balearic DJs of the 1980s, and thus the more sophisticated sound of dance culture thereafter. He was one of the Compass Point All Stars (with Sly and Robbie, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung and Uziah "Sticky" Thompson), the in-house recording team of Compass Point Studios responsible for a series of albums in the 1980s recorded by Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Mick Jagger, Black Uhuru, Gwen Guthrie, Jimmy Cliff and Gregory Isaacs. Badarou's keyboard playing could also be heard on albums by Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithfull, Herbie Hancock, M (Pop Muzik), Talking Heads, Manu Dibango, and Miriam Makeba. Wally's sophisticated synth textures and expressive keyboard runs are so full of character, so full of life, that this work of art transcends any easy genre categorization. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possible quality at Record Industry in Holland.