** Pharaoh Sanders

SAVE OUR CHILDREN

(Verve)

You never know with Sanders whether he's going to play something that'll make your eardrums bleed or just lie back and noodle contentedly. Children is mostly in the latter mode, a world music stew with Sanders largely loafing and a trio of percussionists -- Zakir Hussain, Trilok Gurtu, and Abdou Mboup -- doing the lion's share of heavy lifting. Add a couple of harmoniums and a synthesizer, and the accompaniment gets pretty thick -- all Sanders has to do is show up and nudge at the contours of the pretty melodies for some simulacrum of exploratory music to be achieved. So many wheels are spinning that it takes a while before you realize that nothing much is happening. Sanders does rouse himself for one song, "Kazuko," a ballad à la Coltrane, but in the context of this session his screeches sound gratuitous, a few crowd-pleasing licks for the long-time fans. Aside from that, this is mood music with a vengeance, and even on a golden opportunity like "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," he never moves his tenor much beyond the melody. It's very listenable -- the production values are good and the polyrhythmic percussion and successive drones mesh nicely -- but it would have been more interesting if the leader weren't more or less MIA.

-- Richard C. Walls