Ottmar Liebert

CHRISTMAS + SANTA FE

(Epic)

There was a time when Ottmar Liebert led the electronic-art freakouts of Boston loft-rockers Red. All that changed when he moved to New Mexico, where rarefied air and the need for a paycheck led him to explore the world of new-age flamenco guitar. It's the latter Liebert who shows up on Christmas + Santa Fe. And though the disc often comes uncomfortably close to sounding like a Gipsy Kings-lite version of department-store music, Liebert is inventive enough in his gentle makeovers of traditional carols to keep things interesting. With the help of his Luna Negra band, who contribute a soft bed of bass, keys, horns, percussion, and slide guitar, he blends familiar homy melodies and syncopated rhythms into broad new arrangements: "Farolitos on Garcia/It Came upon a Midnight Clear" and "The 3rd Man/O Christmas Tree" are transformed into parlor waltzes; "Canyon Road on Christmas Eve/Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is a Gypsy shuffle and "Peace/I Saw Three Ships" an easy-rolling sail outfitted with a beautiful mournful bridge. But the CD's best track is its only start-to-finish original, the edge-of-melancholy "Winter Solstice," which gives a shadowed chill to this warm crackle of rethought holiday themes.

-- Tristram Lozaw