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Kate Rusby Our final stop is Brussels, home of long-
standing fRoots favourites Jaune Toujours and offshoot Mec Yek (JT plus a pair of Slo- vakian Romani singing sisters), here both given the remix treatment by a gaggle of DJs from Belgium, France, UK, Canada, Hun- gary and Serbia. The remix album is fast overtaking its live counterpart as the stop- gap of choice for musicians everywhere, but this one hits just about the right note throughout, being neither too wifty-wafty nor too bangy (most albums of this type are either one or the other). Perhaps it’s a mat- ter of personal preference, but I favour the dubbier tracks such as Pomoxis’s opening remix of JT’s Ici Bxl (originally from 2004’s Barricade) and the UK dubster Scratchy’s echo-laden refitting of Mec Yek’s Bashav Mange. Re:Plugged makes for an enjoyable diversion before both projects (hopefully) unveil their next new moves.
www.choux.net – distributed in the UK by Discovery:
www.discovery-records.com
Jamie Renton
KATE RUSBY Make The Light Pure Records PRCD32
It may be stating the blindingly obvious, but Kate Rusby’s whole approach has shift- ed significantly since her split with John McCusker. I mean, she’s never going to make a punk album, but she’s edging sur- reptitiously towards the perimeters of her comfort zone on this, her first entirely self- written album. Bitter Boy, the loaded track from Awkward Annie three years ago which was nominated for a Best Original Song BBC Folk Award increasingly seems to mark a sea-change in her writing, opening the gates to tougher material like Mocking Bird, with its mournful tone and intriguing lyrics (“I can see that bird of shame, I won’t be ruled by anger and I won’t play the game…”) and Let Them Fly, which has a steely menace (“How can you take when you have no consent? We will never be charmed by the charmless…”) which in less elegant hands might sound like an old school protest song. There’s a simmering intensity, too, to the brooding Shout To The Devil and the slightly morose Fair Weather Friend, confounding suggestions that motherhood might have launched her into a frenzy of mumsy platitudes.
True, she’s come up with an epic scarf- waving anthem Walk The Road complete with brass barrage, which will doubtless entice a swaying watery-eyed audience to link arms in a breast-beating concert finale,
but it’s done with far more restraint and taste than her overblown Wild Mountain Thyme (or Blooming Heather as she called it then) designated for a similar role on Awk- ward Annie. The emotional epicentre of Walk The Road is cunningly offset by Damien O’Kane’s tricky banjo, a prominent feature of the whole album which gives her sound a very different dynamic to the tried and trusted sumptuousness of yesteryear. She does have an array of superb musicians around her, not least Julian Sutton (accordeon), Kevin McGuire (double bass) and Malcolm Stitt (bouzouki, guitar), not to mention brass and a yearning string section, though their work is mostly understated, blending almost imperceptibly with the fragile tranquillity of dreamy tracks like Green Fields, Lately and downbeat closer Four Stars. In fact the only time they do get to strut their stuff at full tilt – the god of bodhran playing John Joe Kelly included – is breezy opening track, The Wishing Wife, the song most obviously shaped by the folk tradition and a persuasive bridge between old and new.
Its appeal certainly isn’t instant and longstanding fans may be disconcerted by its sombre overtones, but the Rusby voice – still a potent mix of tragedy and romance – will always go a long way to keeping the customer satisfied while they ponder the oblique, deeper emotions hidden within this studied collection.
www.katerusby.com
Colin Irwin
ALIM QASIMOV & FARGANA QASIMOVA
Intimate Dialogue Dreyer Gaido CD 21060
Very occasionally, very, very occasionally, a recording arrives that so transfixes that work stops and pleasure, enlightenment and education take over. Intimate Dialogue is one of those. It transports. Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova are amongst the finest exponents of Azerbaijan’s supple and sumptuous song traditions. More than a decade ago, it felt meet and right to place Alim Qasimov in a similar league to Pak- istan’s great qawwali maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Now, it has to be said, as Intimate Dialogue reveals and rams home over and over and over again, Alim Qasimov is in a league – whisper or shout it – way beyond Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. That is something that shouldn’t cross these lips. But, there, too late, it’s said.
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Photo: Jeremy Llewellyn-Jones
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