Emi Filter

The spiritual and charitable-minded Japanese keyboardist, who blends ethereal new age textures with a rich soul-jazz sensibility better than anyone, is in top form on her 14th studio release. Like its recent predecessors on Narada Jazz, the CD features songs that are all about the landscape between subtlety and drama, elegant piano melodies and improvisations, dramatic flute and sax harmonies, and rich ambiences dense with percussion. Tying in perfectly with her current humanitarian work with United Nations World Food Program (WFP) efforts in Africa (most of her recent albums have tied into some charitable or health cause), the collection features subtle worldbeat threads throughout. "Flashback" features a gentle, classical-flavored piano melody over a gently throbbing bassline, before Matsui does some dramatic improvisations over dense, exotic percussion textures…

This reviewer is a bit torn over how to approach this triple-CD EMI import of Beach Boys material, mostly because it's almost too good at what it does. It does encompass, in its nearly three-hour running time, almost anything that all but the most totally immersed and dedicated fan could want – the only notable exceptions are a handful of tracks from the '70s Brother Records library, such as "Add Some Music to Your Day" and "This Whole World," but even that end is covered decently, with the inclusion of such tracks as "Sail on Sailor," "Marcella,"…