Akwaba
"Infectious trip-hop beats propel exotic melodies creating both the perfect party album or deep listening experience." --New Age RetailerA German composer who has spent a lot of time playing and listening with the Aborigine people of Australia, Martin Scherl created the nom de plume Tya (pronounced "Tee-shah-ya," Aborigine for "Mother Earth") as a platform for his trance-driven excursions into the pulsing world-music scene. Deep and otherworldly while always accessible and emotionally sweeping, Tya scales the heights of operatic western emotions while always being rooted to the beating heart of the aforementioned mother and her funky percussionist children, be they from Africa, the Middle East, or Europe. Akwaba finds Tya exploring a wealth of styles, from moody and minimal to jam-out funky and passionately solemn, but the focus is always on simple, endearing compositions: melodic piano, rooted percussion, the ominous gravity of the sampled ancient tribal voices, and emotionally uplifting melodies; the haunted anima mundi quality of the tribal world as it once was and shall be again.Showing an acumen for everything from uplifting South African chorale to minimalist piano, Tya excels most when going nowhere in particular only to find himself right there anyway, such as in the burning dub-chamber flow of "Coming Home," with its bridge of spoken tribal-chant vocals, as well as the title track's propulsive techno-classical beat and an interwoven web of indigenous voices. As befits its title ("Welcome") it's inviting and warm. There are tracks that focus on Tya's compositional piano, as in the jaunty intro to "Soft Touch," and his knack for cinematic emotion, such as via the lone harmonica that gradually opens to elaborate orchestration in "A Place to Rest." Through it all the voices keep coming, and Tya has a gift for blending them until tribes from all over and from all ages past and present seem to merge together into one throbbing, impassioned voice.The trance-inducing grooves and good vibes all culminate in the blissful cheery arrival of "Daybreak." Tya is deeply focused on reaching the dark corners of your stress deposits and emptying out everything but the bliss within you. If Akwaba captures the heady glory of early global trance music, it also takes it both deeper into the past and farther into the future. Through the miracle of sound and creative inspiration, this all boils down to one thing, the present~the here and now~which Akwaba can show you in a whole new, soothing light all the way through and until the dawn. --DailyOM, January 15th, 2010Tya is a German keyboardist and programmer with an affinity for  the music of aboriginal Australia and access to samples of singers like the  Bulgarian Voices, Sarband, and Trinovox. Tya will win you over with his  melodies, subdued but funky beats, and complex sonic textures. What makes  this music so attractive is Tya's two-pronged strategy of bringing the  beats right up to the front, and finding good singers to sample and using  the samples well. Notice, for example, the combination of African and  European voices on `Coming Home' and the dubwise treatment he applies to  the gorgeous choral singers on `Mama.' --Rick Anderson