Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It often feels like the most insane of human accomplishments, the ability to mark down on a map where a boundary or borderline should be; even more bizarre that throughout the centuries and hundreds of thousands of years of steadily climbing up the evolutionary scale, that we should still ways of tearing each other apart, that we still look with green envious eyes to the shade and colour of the grass on the other side.
It is in this odd sense of comfort that patriotism thrives and whilst it is good to love the place you are from and take pride in it, wish it become bountiful, it should never be at the expense of another country feeling deserted, bereft or even isolated. It is to the boundary between us all that we remain divided, whether in spirit, or in practise and is through art that the boundaries become superfluous, that as The Oran Project subtly portray in their first full length release, Music Without Borders is only natural, positive and the springboard for others to realise that boundaries are only for cricket.
The musicians that band leader Dougie Gordon has assembled gives the album its diverse, succinct and praiseworthy passion, it is in the journey, one unhindered by passport controls and the gaze of the stony faced shuffling papers and the power trip that accompanies such blind obedience to the invisible line of the border and one that Hazel McLure, Mike Delaitre, Andy Gilmour and Bill Dicks join with sentiment and pride in the eight song expression placed down for prosperity.
In tracks such as Mali Blues, Budapest, Arizona and A Distant Border, the music follows comfortably on from the songs Morocco and Paris that were released to great acclaim in 2015. Music Without Borders, a world where at least art is allowed to travel freely and lead to the exchange of information and ideas, it is the overwhelming urge to feel something of a land which the eyes may never see, and without that urge we become entangled in the game they want us to play.
A set of songs that open the greatest border of them all, the one that can become closed minded if not tended to regularly, given enough reasons to see the world beyond the limitations that others say are necessary but to whom instinctively you know have had their eyes closed; these are the borders that must be opened first, the one in which the senses can appreciate fully a group of musicians such as The Oran Project.
Ian D. Hall