All-Reviews.com Music Review
In the Dark

The Brandin's, Gary and Geof, form the one-two punch of "The Vanduras." This isn't the normal quick in and out of the water energetic surf-instro music. Most of their songs are in the three to four minute range. This brand of instrumental music is what you call soft island surf. It's filled with beautiful and alluring Hawaiian lap steel and pedal steel guitars.

This music is so warm and inviting. Your living room becomes a beach and your rocking chair a lounge chair underneath the nearest palm tree to the ocean. I have said it so many times before about this kind of music…it just takes me away and gives me complete uncomplicated bliss for a half hour out of my stress filled life. There are some great acoustically blended numbers with the lap steel guitars to give it that true-to-life atmospheric feeling that I am always searching for in music. "Rope'n Pineapples" takes you away from the beach front for a bit a gives you are ride on the buckin' bronco at the ranch. Their country twangin' will make you want to turn on the TV and watch reruns of "Gunsmoke." "Lost Beach" has some haunting background vocals that were different than what I am accustomed to hearing from this genre, but very good. "Atomic" adds the solitude of the piano to their aural soundscape, and the CD ends with a spaced out far-off-in- the-distance "Levitare."

I can feel the warm tropical breeze blowing through my hair and the warmth of the sand between my toes listening to all of this. This is the way it's supposed to be. This one is a gift from the Tiki God himself that is gladly accepted in my humble abode.

© Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck February 19, 2002

1. In The Dark
2. La Planche
3. The Big Hurt
4. El Monte
5. Cybele's Reverie
6. Lost Beach
7. Dinner with Robert
8. Charlotte
9. Sarajevo Rose
10. Rope'n Pineapples
11. Theme for Troubled Teens
12. Atomic
13. Levitare