The Cosmic Game

1	Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun) / Flaming Lips 4:01
2	Warning Shots / Gunjan 5:02
3	Revolution Solution / Perry Farrell 3:41
4	The Cosmic Game 2:19
5	Satyam Shivam Sundaram / Gunjan 4:07
6	Amerimacka / Notch 5:41
7	Ambicion Eterna / Verny Varela 3:43
8	Pela Janela / Gigi Rezende 3:41
9	Sol Tapado / Patrick DeSantos 3:57
10	The Heart's a Lonely Hunter / David Byrne 4:03
11	Holographic Universe 3:42
12	Doors of Perception / Gunjan 3:16
13	Wires and Watchtowers / Sista Pat 4:19
14	The Supreme Illusion / Gunjan 4:10
15	The Time We Lost Our Way / Loulou 4:11
16	A Gentle Dissolve 2:49

Barnes & Noble

Protest music rarely goes down with the ease of a top-shelf martini. But leave it to Washington, D.C., duo Thievery Corporation to whip up a sonic cocktail that's equal parts conscience and style. Partners in crime Rob Garza and Eric Hilton take inspiration from deep record collections -- sampling Latin jazz and Bacharach pop to ska, dub, and sounds from the Middle and Far East -- and their youthful days on the progressive fringe of D.C.'s counterculture, listening to leaflet-toting bands like Fugazi. It all comes together on Thievery Corp's fourth album, The Cosmic Game, with a twist -- an appropriately global dose of psychedelia. Songs like "Warning Shots," featuring dancehall MC Sleepy Wonder and Indian singer Gunjan, and "Amerimacka," with Jamaican singer Notch, suggest the meditative side of ska, infusing popular Western sounds with island riddims and cries from the oppressed. There are also forays down south (the Latin-flavored "Sol Tapado," featuring Cape Verdean singer Patrick de Santos) and out east (the sitar-infused "Doors of Perception," again featuring Gunjan). But this disc leans more heavily on rock sounds than its predecessors, with guest shots from the Flaming Lips (on the woozy "Marching the Hate Machines into the Sun," which evokes Zero 7), Perry Farrell (the spacey "Revolution Solution"), and David Byrne (the more up-tempo "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter"), broadening the mind in more ways than one. They may have been the unwitting progenitors of down-tempo dance music, but Garza and Hilton's brainy spin on lounge proves they're interested in more than velvet-rope fabulousness. This cabal aims to push boundaries, both musical and otherwise. Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

The ingredients -- electronic beats, dub, soft Brazilian tones, sitars, and women singing in foreign languages -- are entirely the same, but Thievery Corporation have never sounded so genuine. Despite the same old sound and a busy release schedule leading up to it, The Cosmic Game comes across as fresh as a debut and surprisingly indifferent toward being the in thing. What it is is music for music's sake, all laid out with the utmost care, giving listeners a fully thought-out album that makes the "forward" button on your CD player purposeless. Effortlessly flowing from the indie-grooving "Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)" with the Flaming Lips to reggae to samba to psychedelia and beyond, the album is trimmed of all fat. Instrumentals with clever grooves sometimes overstayed their welcome on previous Thievery albums, but here they're whittled down to interludes when need be and positioned as chillout segues between the more striking numbers. The druggy, Perry Farrell-inna-reggae-style "Revolution Solution" is one of these stunners, but the superstars don't own all the highlights. As dank, Jamaican-flavored horns echo into the distance, siren Sista Pat lures listeners into the deep world of "Wires and Watchtowers" while soulful crooner Notch takes things uptown on the cool "Amerimacka" before the Corp turn the tune into one of their stickiest dub outings yet. The pleasant "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" deserves mention because David Byrne guests on vocals, and while it's very good, it's the most forgettable number on this outing. The track brings a very slight reminder of when Thievery Corporation have let ambition trump the meaningful and meaty, but the otherwise purposeful and certain Cosmic Game is so darkly delicious you have to admit it's their masterwork. David Jeffries