Village Thrift

(FEATURING: 100 PORTRAITS, TODD BERGER, RYAN L.)

2005

What happens when you revisit the foundation of the original Enter the Worship Circle series, but foster collaboration with artists who speak the musical languages of cultures outside the spectrum of tribal drums and acoustic guitars?

Village Thrift has been constructed from the existing foundation of it's sister Worship Circle recordings, and though sharing the name of it's predecessors, this sibling has opened a new doorway altogether for experimentation in techniques used in cultivating environments of worship. With collaborative songwriting and acoustic instrumentation interchanged with discovered (thrift) sounds manipulated electronically, Enter the Worship Circle has purposefully hijacked technologies that have up to this point been used exclusively by DJ's, Art-Rock, and Hip-Hop artists. Take a little pop melody work from Moby, a little ambient rhythm from the Telefon Tel Aviv, add some offbeat elements like sympohonic rock from the Art of Noise, and finish it off with the voices of Ben and Robin Pasley and newcomers Todd Berger and Ryan Lott and you are starting to feel the vibe of Village Thrift.

Circa 2005, the first in the Village Thrift series, is a wide-eyed journey that explores themes of doubt in our failure-prone humanity, and our absolute dependence on God's sufficiency in times when we find our faith to be thin. In the book of Psalms, King David has left a trail for us of abolute honesty and vulnerability in approaching the Holy One-- evidence of God's ability to receive all who will come as they are. These songs are inspired directly from those Psalms, and in keeping with the original Worship Circle series, this album is a "must have" for any Worship Circle fans.

Performers on this album include:

Todd Berger

Ben Pasley

Robin Pasley

Dee Jay Doc

A REVIEW:

Reviewed for Allolam by Samuel Aaron

"If you would have told me that a Christian worship band would release a completely unique album of progressive pop, I would have laughed. Worship bands are lucky if they could even remotely sound like what is currently popular – let alone trying to sound ahead of the game, but that is what this album does...The words are taken, for the most part, directly from the book of Psalms, but they are mixed into the samplings, symphonies and backbeats to give them a completely chilled effect. ...I cannot stress enough that this is a truly original release; highly stylized and lushly arraigned it is the perfect addition to any music collection, and don’t let the worship title get you down, even if your not a Christian you should find enough talent and beauty in this release to make you hum along without any kind of guilt."

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