David Antony Clark's Before Africa is easily one of the best releases on the stellar White Cloud label, and that's really saying something. The label is earning a reputation for quality music that may be unmatched. On this release, the keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist has produced a work so full of life and joy and rhythm that when I first actively listened to it (in the car during a trip back from Milwaukee, Wisconsin) it completely blew me away. This is an outstanding "driving" recording, so if you don't have a car CD player, record this album and set out for your favorite winding country road. You will not be disappointed.

The album opener, "A Land Before Eden," starts the release off on a high note with its gentle but playful loping rhythm, its floating background synths, its flute melody line and it's cheerful yet worldly sense of optimism. This song is simply one of the best pieces of music I've heard in the past year. I never want to stop playing it. But, when I did, I found the "Stone Children" with it's kalimba-like melody over some background vocal samplings. The kalimba is a wonderful instrumental sound and I flat out fell in love with it. The rhythm on this song is mid-tempo, again in a sort of loping beat, and that's the key to this album's success as driving music.

Scattered throughout the CD are ambient sound recordings of life in Africa, some wildlife, some nature and they are well-done (listen to the sounds of animals at a watering hole at the beginning of "The Gathering Place". It adds to the feel of the CD as it helps to transport you into the otherworld that exists on only the very best recordings.

By turns haunting ("Flamingo Lake"), gently rhythmic ("The Gathering Place"), mysterious ("Ancestral Voices"), and quasi-tribal/primal ("The Inner Hunt"), all of the music on Before Africa is a joy to hear. As a reviewer and someone who gets lots of music to listen to, when something makes it into my "keep playing it way past the review" group, it's a very special recording. David Antony Clark's latest is definitely one of those.