85 f VARIOUS ARTISTS
Pakistan: Folk and Pop Instrumentals 1966 – 1976 Sublime Frequencies SF064LP
GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab Sublime Frequencies SF063
GROUP INERANE
Guitars From Agadez Volume 3 Sublime Frequencies SF061
HAYVANLAR ALEMI
Guarana Superpower Sublime Frequencies SF062LP
While the kind of people who prophesy such things have long been predicting the dawn of the digital-only age, the Sublime Frequencies label displays pleasing perversity in releasing four vinyl LPs. But there’s more than a desire to cock a snook to the peddlers of downloads at play here. The crunchy, dirty, guitar driven lo-fi sounds that are SF’s speciality work much better on vinyl than on CD (let alone mp3!).
My favourite of the quartet is also the least promisingly titled, Pakistan: Folk and Pop Instrumentals 1966 – 1976 sounds like some dry-as-a-bone catch-all musicological survey, but in reality puts the spotlight on a distinctive and previously unearthed sub- genre, 22 examples of what happened when local youths discovered the instrumentation, style and stimulants of the Swinging Sixties, twangy surf guitar and psychedelia spiked up with Indian sub-continental twists and turns. Very similar to what was going on in Peru at the time, as chronicled by the recent series of chicha compilations reviewed in these pages. A couple of the tracks here even feature something close to the loping cumbia rhythm that underpins chicha. This double album is a labour of love from compiler Stuart Ellis, who’s spent years hunting down these tracks, often the only recordings from bands with names like The Mods, The Panthers, The Abstracts and The Bluebirds. All previously unavailable since an initial limited release on 45 for the local market. In truth, you proba- bly wouldn’t want to hear too much more from any of them, but what’s on offer here is surprisingly entertaining.
The third album from Western Saharan trance rockers Group Doueh draws on tradi- tional instrumentation (lute, harp, clay pots and tea glasses!) along with their trademark amped-up guitars and cheep synths. You can call it folk-rock if you like, but it’s folk rock that taps into some wigged-out deep-roots-meets- scuzzy-modern-grooves combination. The playing is hypnotic and imaginative, but what really hooks in is the wild, near hysterical (but oddly attractive) voices of husband and wife vocal duo Bashiri Toubali and Halima Jakani.
The Group Inerane album is titled Gui- tars from Agudez Vol 3 and was recorded on location in Niger last year. It’s pure, raw desert blues, a currently oversubscribed genre, following the success of Tinariwen. What makes the Inerane quartet stand out is their no-messing approach: two singer/ guitarists, a bassist and a drummer locking into repetitive, trancy grooves. No-one’s aim- ing to pick up on the post-Stones blues-rock market and they sound all the better for it, this music just is! The downside to this is that once you’ve heard one track, you’ve pretty much heard all that they’ve got to offer. But listened to at the right volume and in the right frame of mind, this hits all the desert blues pleasure buttons.
Turkish psych rockers Hayvanlar Alemi are a contemporary outfit who mix local musical flavours with often stodgy-sounding ‘70s rock. Their press releases promises a whole raft of influences from Cambodian pop to late ‘80s post-punk, but what my ears
Group Doueh
hear is guitar-heavy rawk with a few pinches of oriental spice. All executed with commit- ment and energy but sounding a bit dated. On the best track, Snakesurfing, they pull back the sonic overload and go for a ‘Dick Dale sails down the Bosphorus’ sound, other- wise it left me cold.
Distributed by Forced Exposure.
www.sublimefrequencies.com
Jamie Renton
VARIOUS ARTISTS Romská Balada Indies Scope MAM474-2
Romská Balada (Roma Ballad) is a musical cre- ation – “the ballad of sorrow, grief, pain and dark earth” – forged by vocalists Ida Kelarova and Desiderius Dužda, pianist Tomáš Ka˘
the Škampa Quartet (Helena Ji˘ríkovská and Daniela Sou˘
cková on violins, Radim Sed-
midubský on viola and Lukáš Polák on cello) in the smithy of contemporary Czech Roma life. Over 13 tracks, beginning and ending with Mamo (Mama), the musicians create and inhabit a world very different to the one most listeners inhabit. Yet they welcome you in.
Like her near-contemporary V˘ era Bílá,
Kelarova is one of the great champions of Czech Roma song and culture and is blessed with a voice of unimpeachable presence. Like great Gypsy singers can, she sends shivers up and down the spine. But just as she could never be V˘ Ida Kelarova.
era Bílá, V˘ era Bílá could never be
This project uses the talents of the Škam- pa Quartet judiciously and tellingly. The string quartet accompaniments on, say, Amare Havore (Our Children), Bijav (Wed- ding) and Šun Devloro (Hear Me, My God) create an ambience and a shimmering sound- scape effect of a kind that Roma music has never, in my experience, ever seen. The song suite flows marvellously, waylaying expecta- tions with soaring grace notes, surprise vocal twists and fat piano chords and filigrees. One song flows into the next. Following the story or narrative is simplicity itself. The notes are in Czech and English and the Roma lyrics have Czech and English translations. I count Rom- ská Balada as one of the greatest Roma recordings I have ever experienced. I have never heard its like. Or just call it ‘Deepest soul’. It is a crowning glory for Kelarova.
www.indies.eu through Discovery in the UK.
Ken Hunt co and
A BANDA DAS CRECHAS ABDC Do Fol 10002047
For decades A Casa das Crechas at Via Sacra 3 in Santiago de Compostela has been the best known session-bar in Galicia’s folk music revival, the most likely place to run into and play with musicians from Spain’s green north- west and sometimes from abroad. On May 31st 2009 a bunch of those who were around of its long-time and more occasional denizens, some widely-known, some not, gathered there to record the music they like and which has united them over the years.
The material is played and sung with a nice balance of democratic directedness of arrangement and non-studio informality and on a shifting cast of instruments including fiddle, gaita, flutes, sax, accordeon, guitar, banjolin and the exuberant rattle-patter of pandeireta. Mostly Galician – xota, muiñeira, pasodoble, marcha procesional, rumba, but with songs including a spirited Meu Cabaliño and the Cuban-emigration song Unha Noite Na Eira Do Trigo, and also tunes that have drifted in from the rest of the European folk revival from Sweden, Ireland and the Balkans, learnt from the likes of Väsen, JPP and Andy Irvine, wrapped in a Galician embrace.
www.dofolmusica.com Andrew Cronshaw
ENOCH KENT
Take A Trip With Me Borealis Records, BCD202
Enoch Kent is a stalwart of the Scottish folk revival of the ’50s and ’60s who emigrated to Canada in the 1960s. I remember going to the library with my father to borrow vinyl albums with Enoch Kent’s name on. In this, the latest of his six Canadian CDs, he performs tradi- tional and contemporary songs about life, love and working-class struggle in Scotland, Canada, England, the USA and Australia. Instrumental accompaniment is provided by guitars, button accordeon, bouzouki, banjo, whistles and pipes.
Enoch’s deep, craggy voice powerfully conveys pent-up strong emotion. The warmth and colour of his expressive vocal is ideally suited to songs such as the terrifying ballads about the murderous brutality of mine- owners (Woody Guthrie’s 1913 Massacre and Enoch Kent’s The Murder Of Ginger Good- win). In a recent interview he is quoted as
Photo: Ian Anderson
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