Welcome to Breakdown, an unofficial resource and discussion list about the innovative guitarist/producer Michael Brook. This site is infrequently updated, but contains a great deal of background info which will remain online. For up-to-date news and information, visit Michael Brook's official site and MySpace page.

Babbling Brook a compendium of articles reviews and interviews

Black Rock review
from Q Magazine 1999
by David Sheppard
[archived here without permission]

Black Rock Genre-bending collaboration between Canadian soundscaper and Armenian duduk virtuoso. The duduk dates back to Armenia's pre-Christian times with a tone pitched somewhere between an oboe and a deluxe kazoo. In the hands of a maestro like Gasparayan, however, it's capable of expressing a range of evocative timbres with an over-riding tendency toward the melancholic. With Brook's more occidentally inclined ('infinite') guitar stylings for contrast, the recipe, as on the duo's earlier Moon Shines At Night, is a unique and exotic one. Thus, the doleful meanders of Take My Heart are a near-perfect meld of the ethnic and the technological, while Brook's minimalist twang presages the percussion-enhanced Forbidden Love and takes the lead on the languid, Ventures-on-mogadon Together Forever. Elsewhere, Gasparayan's atmospheric droning takes precedence - with an Armenian vocal for added spice on the aching Dark Souls.

rating: 3