“Dance to it, make love to it, consume it, listen to it, stare at the clouds to it!”-Iggy Pop Are you alive?
Are you loved?
What’s not enough about that?! Vula Viel continue their sonic explorations around the gyil, the wooden xylophone from Upper West Ghana, on their brand new set, ‘What’s Not Enough About That’. “My journey with the gyil has always been rooted in the Dagaare traditions”, explains Burch, “but through playing live and developing a tight chemistry together, the band is constantly pushing its own boundaries and finding its own new directions. On this album, I wanted to bring more space into our music and echo feelings and emotions through the ebb and flow of the tracks – reflection, hope, urgency, determination, anger.” The result is an expansive, spacious album which winds effortlessly from the reassuring pulse of ‘My Own Skin’ through to the gently soaring, textured ‘Bird In Kumasi’ and strident closer ‘Six Days In One’. Lyrically, the messages celebrate mindfulness and our uniqueness as people: “Even not fitting in, I am comfortable in my own skin” on the affirming opening track, while guest vocalist, New York experimental music great Peter Zummo (Arthur Russell) laconically urges us on the title track that life and love is enough to give us genuine happiness; on ‘Forget And Forgive’, Ghanaian palm-wine legend Koo Nimo urges us to reflect, forget and forgive after arguments. ‘WNEAT’ marks another major step in the evolution of Vula Viel.