by Diana Potts
Steve Halpern's Deja-Blues is a reworking of his 1978 album From Hear to Eternity. This time around, Halpern adds guest vocals and has restructured the instrumentals to take the listener on even a further journey than before. As the album opens with the title track, a scene of sailing down a heat drenched, narrow tropical river in a boat is painted with Halpern's rhythms and the bamboo flute solos by Schawkie Roth. Ethereal vocals come courtesy of Melissa Phillippe, who contributes more to the exotic picture of a place somewhere between Morocco and Tibet. The last track, &Atlantis Rising,& brings the listener to the exotic bright sunset that puts the untamed wilderness and the journey to an end. Though Halpern's work is nothing towards groundbreaking, it is a more rhythmic attempt at a genre that often acts as a lullaby, rather than an encouraging calm.