25 Men: The Dancing Wu-Li Masters (D-Monic) -  Review written by Chris Sampson 

’Everybody experiences everything that goes on in the universe’ – 25 Men 

’The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the centre, the heart of the matter.’ – Gary Zukav

The first time I saw James Ray he was crossing Camden High Street in the evening rush hour.  Oblivious to any risk posed by the traffic he just strode out into the road without breaking stride, cars melting by on either side.  The message seemed to be that James Ray will do what James Ray will do, and the world had better fit in around him.

The James Ray "comeback" is now into its fourth year and fifth band if we count the various incarnations of Gangwar, 4080 Peru, the superb Tom Waits-ish James Ray and the Longfolk EP, and something called The Otherfolk which may not have got further than a Myspace page – a technology incidentally, that with its random links, multimedia and potential for cosmic chaos, seems to suit Ray.
Even more baffling have been the handful of recent James Ray live appearances.  The few who have seen these gigs and survived unscathed came back, ashen faced, with reports of a blizzard of strobe lighting, disordered smoke and colour, and a hellish noise, mashed by reverb into a disorienting attack more like a psychological interrogation than a gig.
The opening track, Are You Receiving Me Now, sets the tone for the album, with robust electro-trancic foundations, embellished with traces of guitar filigree.  This is very much a progression of the late Gangwar style, and while the studio sound exhibits more control, less chaos than the live performances, it’s still a deeper, more complex soundstage than Gangwar achieved.  Ray’s vocals are sparingly used, sometime annoyingly so when various superfluous samples crop up in the space where Ray should be exerting his personality.  But towards the end of Are You Receiving Me Now it begins to gel with Ray sounding like a meta-character from a Phillip K Dick novel, straining to reach across the divide from a hallucinatory parallel reality. 
25 Men are at their best when Ian Ford’s guitar drifts in, adding bite and crunch, and this is especially effective on Bethlehem to Babel.  The song is all tease and no climax, it builds and builds, travelling without arrival.  Maybe that’s the point.  The guitars are given free reign in All The Way, where Simon Matthews unleashes a Gilmouresque riff, and on the formidable No Control, the album’s best track.
About halfway through I realise I have absolutely no idea what the album is ’about’.  There seem to be no common themes in the lyrics, and there are no melodies to tug at the heartstrings and resonate in the mind.  But in spite of this it does make a kind of fractured sense, that out of this chaos and randomness, a tripped out meaning can be found.  Again I’m reminded of Phillip K Dick at his most extreme.

In the end I was left wanting something more out of The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, and found the album promises rather than delivers.  I would have liked to hear more guitar and a more prominent, harsher snare sound in the drum programming.  I wanted it to push on further, with James Ray as a babbling messianic figure, ranting in tongues from the top of the mountain (or at least the front of a festival stage).  I wanted more extremes in the heart of chaos.  The Dancing Wu-Li Masters flirts with something profound.  Now we want to hear the heart of the matter that this shimmering beast of a band threatens to unveil.

Chris Sampson